Crime Branch probe tainted: Accused

Dinesh Manhotra

Tribune News Service

Jammu, April 25

Amid nationwide outrage against the horrific murder and alleged rape of an eight-year-old girl at Rasana village in Kathua, two accused, who have been arrested by the Crime Branch of Jammu and Kashmir Police, have levelled some serious charges against the investigating agency.

In their writ petition filed in the J&K High Court on Monday seeking a CBI probe into the heinous crime, the accused have not ruled out possibility that evidence might have been planted by policemen to substantiate the allegations incorporated in the chargesheet filed by the Crime Branch.

On Monday, advocate Veenu Gupta had filed the petition on the behalf of accused Sub-Inspector Anand Dutta and Special Police Officer Deepak Khajuria, seeking quashing of the Crime Branch probe. Instead, the petition sought an inquiry into the case by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

In their 20-page petition, both the accused dubbed the chargesheet as “laughable” and full of fabricated evidence to implicate them in the heinous crime.

“The Crime Branch has done a highly tainted investigation and has in fact saved the real culprits, who may have actually committed the crime, in order to implicate the accused in furtherance of their pre-conceived notion. In this process, the petitioners have also been made accused despite the fact that they are not involved in the commission of the crime,” the counsel for the accused mentioned in the petition.

In its chargesheet, the Crime Branch said the DNA of the hair strands found inside the “devsathan” matched with those of the 8-year-old girl who was murdered and allegedly raped. The accused claimed, “By collecting the hair strands from the ‘devsthan’ months after the alleged rape occurred to connect it with the victim so as to portray the story that the girl was kept there shows that the Crime Branch has ‘manufactured’ evidence,” it said.

The girl was reported missing on January 10 when she failed to return home from the forest near Rasana village in the Hiranagar area of Kathua district. Her body was found on January 17.

After protests rocked the area, the police set up a special investigation team, under the Sub-Divisional Police Officer (Border), to investigate the case.

On January 20, the government transferred the Station House Officer of the Hiranagar police station and ordered a magisterial probe into the case. On January 23, it handed over the investigation into the case to the Crime Branch which filed the chargesheet on April 10.