Activist Talib Hussain moves SC, alleges custodial torture
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, August 7
Activist Talib Hussain -- a witness in the Kathua gang rape case — on Tuesday moved the Supreme Court alleging custodial torture after he was arrested in a rape case lodged against him at Samba police station.
A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra agreed to hear his plea—filed through his cousin—on Wednesday.
On behalf of the petitioner, advocate Sunil Fernandes told the Bench that there was threat to his life as he played an important role in exposing the accused in the Kathua gangrape case.
The petitioner alleged that Hussain had been falsely implicated in the case and subjected to torture.
The rape case was lodged against him in July by wife of his brother-in-law. He has also been booked in a dowry case logded by his estranged wife in June.
The Kathua rape case victim – an eight-year-old girl from a nomadic community had disappeared from near her home in a village in Kathua on January 10. Her body was found in the same locality a week later. The Crime Branch of Jammu and Kashmir Police had taken up the probe into the case on January 22 and filed a chargesheet against seven accused and a separate chargesheet against a juvenile accused in a court in Kathua district on April 9.
The minor girl was allegedly kidnapped, drugged and raped inside a place of worship before being killed, police had alleged.
The top court has already transferred the trial from Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir, to Pathankot in Punjab and ordered a day-to-day “in-camera” trial in the case.
The Supreme Court had on July 9 ordered shifting of seven accused facing trial in the Kathua gang rape and murder case from sub-jail, Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir to Gurdaspur in Punjab.
