Kathua rape: Final hearing on September 14

Tribune News Service

Saurabh Malik

Chandigarh, July 15

After over three years, a bunch of appeals, filed by the accused and the State of J&K in the Kathua rape and murder case, will come up for final hearing on September 14 before the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The matter was last heard on August 7, 2019. The Bench headed by Justice Rajiv Sharma had even before that made it clear that the matter could not be allowed to remain hanging, while asserting that it would hear the matter before the Independence Day. The Bench had, in fact, ordered that the appeals filed by four convicts would be heard on a regular basis, along with three appeals by the State and another by the victim’s father.

But the case failed to make any headway after August 2019 as the hearing was adjourned. In March 2020, the courts went into restrictive mode following the Covid outbreak.

As one of the pleas filed by accused Sanji Ram came up for hearing, the Bench of Justice Tejinder Singh Dhindsa and Justice Pankaj Jain asserted, “Hearing in the instant application is deferred on a joint request made by counsel for the parties as the main appeal, which is already on the regular board of this court, is set down for final hearing on September 14”. The State was represented by senior advocate RS Cheema with counsel Arshdeep Singh Cheema.

An eight-year-old girl was kidnapped and sedated before she was raped multiple times and bludgeoned to death in Kathua district. A Pathankot court had on June 10, 2019, convicted six of the seven accused.

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