On SC order, Rohtak IGP takes a re-look at Sirsa gang-rape case

Sushil Manav

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Tribune News Service

Sirsa, December 3

Inspector General of Police (Rohtak Range) Shrikant Jadhav today visited the district’s Kagdana village to connect the dots in a case of gang-rape and murder of a teenage Muslim girl. The local police had treated the case as a hit-and-run road accident.

Revisiting the case on the Supreme Court orders, Jadhav spent more than two hours in the village and explored possibilities by placing a man on a road in a position in which the girl’s body was found.

He discussed the case with a team of forensic science lab officials, police officers who investigated the case earlier, and spoke to witnesses and people related to the case in any manner. “We are trying to revisit the case from every possible angle,” Jadhav told The Tribune when asked whether or not his investigation was heading in the right direction.

“The local police messed up the case earlier. Vital clues were lost because the police treated the case as a road accident,” the IGP said.

The 15-year-old Muslim girl was allegedly kidnapped from her village in Rajasthan’s Bhadra tehsil, that shares border with Sirsa, on the night of December 10, 2011. After allegedly raping her, the accused clubbed her to death. Her body was crushed under a tractor or some other heavy vehicle on road near Kagdana.

The police had registered a case of rash driving and causing death by negligence against unidentified persons.

The victim’s viscera made it clear she was raped before her death. The tests on semen swabs taken from her body brought out the girl was gangraped.

The victim’s brother, a junior engineer in Haryana, who had been running from pillar to post to get the case investigated either from the CBI or from an “upright and honest police officer” of the state police, suggested Jadhav’s name after Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Prafulla C Pant of the Supreme Court directed the Haryana DGP in August to get the matter inquired from a senior IPS officer. 

For the record

• The 15-year-old Muslim girl was allegedly kidnapped from her village in Rajasthan’s Bhadra tehsil, that shares border with Sirsa, on the night of December 10, 2011
• After allegedly raping her, the accused clubbed her to death. Her body was crushed under a tractor or some other heavy vehicle near Kagdana village 
• The police had registered a case of rash driving and death by negligence of the IPC against unidentified persons
• The victim’s viscera made it clear she was raped before her death
• The tests on semen swabs taken from her body brought out the girl was gangraped