CBI cracks Kotkhai case, accused in court custody

Tribune News Service  

Shimla/New Delhi, April 25

The CBI on Wednesday claimed it had cracked the nine-month-old rape and murder case of a 16-year-old schoolgirl in Kotkhai, Shimla, with the arrest of a 25-year-old Himachal resident, Anil Kumar, whose DNA sample, the agency said, matched cent per cent with the genetic material found at the crime site.   

The accused, on the run in an attempt to murder case, was produced before a court in Shimla on Wednesday and sent to judicial custody.

The victim had gone missing while returning from school on July 4, 2017. Her body was found in  Halaila forest in Kotkhai on July 6. The postmortem examination revealed she was raped. There was public outrage and the case assumed a political hue in poll-bound Himachal Pradesh. 

The probe was taken over by the CBI on July 22, 2017, on the orders of the state High Court. Ruling out the role of five suspects arrested by the Himachal Pradesh Police, the agency started the probe afresh, working on multiple fronts with CBI officials speaking to over 1,000 people and recording the statements of over 400.

A team of 40 CBI officials camped in the area around the crime scene for nine months in extreme secrecy, collecting intelligence from locals, digging records of those with criminal records and following various leads, which took them to Kashmir and Uttarakhand as well.

The agency collected 250 DNA samples of people from various backgrounds. In one case, the agency found that some percentage of a sample matched with the DNA of blood samples found on a liquor bottle at the crime scene and the clothes and the body of the victim, said sources. During questioning, it surfaced that a relative of the person whose blood sample was taken had worked at a nearby locality when the crime had occurred. Following that trail, the agency reached Anil Kumar’s house in Kangra district, where it found that he had a criminal past. (With PTI inputs)