An Indian girl displays a placard during a protest against two recently reported rape cases as protestors gathered near the Parliament in New Delhi. (Image: AP)
SRINAGAR, APRIL 16 (Reuters): Eight men accused of involvement in the rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in India's Jammu and Kashmir state appeared in court on Monday for the first hearing in a case that sparked nationwide outrage and criticism of the ruling party.
The girl, from a nomadic community that roams the forests of Kashmir, was drugged, held captive in a temple and sexually assaulted for a week before being strangled and battered to death with a stone in January, police said.
Public anger at the crime led to protests in cities across India over the past few days, with outrage fuelled by support for the accused initially shown by state government ministers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The protests have also focused on another rape allegedly involving a BJP lawmaker in the crime-ridden, most populous, poor northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
The outrage has drawn parallels with massive protests that followed the gang rape and murder of a woman on a Delhi bus in 2012, which forced the then Congress-led government to enact tough new rape laws including the death penalty.
Yet India has long been plagued by violence against women and children - reported rapes climbed 60 percent from 2012 to 40,000 in 2016, and many more go unreported, especially in rural areas.
Reports of torture, rape and murder of another child have emerged from Modi's western home state of Gujarat.
In that case, the corpse of a girl was found near a cricket ground in the city of Surat a week ago.
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Members of various Muslim outfits protest against Kathua rape and murder case, in Chennai. (Image: PTI)[/caption]
The post-mortem showed she had been tortured and sexually assaulted before being strangled. The body had 86 injury marks, including some inflicted to her genitalia with hard, blunt objects, while more minor injuries suggest she had been beaten with a stick or slapped.
Doctors estimate that the unidentified girl was about 12, police said.
As the groundswell of revulsion grew, Modi assured the country on Friday that the guilty would not be shielded, but he has been criticised for failing to speak out sooner.
Before leaving for an official visit to Europe this week, Modi received a letter from 50 former police chiefs, ambassadors and senior civil servants upbraiding the political leadership over its weak response.
"The bestiality and the barbarity involved in the rape and murder of an eight-year-old child shows the depths of depravity that we have sunk into," the former officials said.
"In post-Independence India, this is our darkest hour and we find the response of our government, the leaders of our political parties inadequate and feeble."
The letter went further by blaming the BJP and likeminded right-wing Hindu groups for promoting a culture of "majoritarian belligerence and aggression" in Jammu, and in the Uttar Pradesh case it blasted the party for using feudal strongmen, who behave like gangsters, to shore up its rule.
The former officials said they held no political affiliation other than to uphold the values of India's secular constitution that guarantees equal rights to all citizens. Some of the signatories have spoken out in the past also against Modi's Hindu nationalist party accusing it of whipping up hostility towards India's 172 million Muslims.
THREATS AGAINST LAWYER
Fallout from the 2012 rape case led to the resignation of Congress chief minister of Delhi. This time, Congress was quick to realise the mood of the country, with party leader Rahul Gandhi leading the first major protest in the capital last week.
On Monday, Gandhi tweeted that there had been nearly 20,000 child rapes in India in 2016, and urged Modi to fast-track prosecutions "if he is serious about providing 'justice for our daughters'".
Though the rape and killing of the girl in Kashmir had been known about for months, the backlash erupted after the charge sheet giving gruesome details of the crime was filed last week.
It alleged that the attack was part of a plan to drive the nomads out of Kathua district in Jammu, the mostly Hindu portion of India's only Muslim-majority state.
The alleged ringleader of the campaign, retired bureaucrat Sanji Ram, looked after a small Hindu temple where the girl had been held and assaulted. Two of the eight on trial are police officers who stand accused of being bribed to stifle the investigation.
After Monday's initial hearing in Srinagar, the judge adjourned the case until April 28 while the Supreme Court heard a petition from the lawyer representing the victim's family to have the trial held elsewhere due to fears for her safety.
Ahead of the trial, the lawyer said she had been threatened with rape and death for taking up the case.
"I was threatened yesterday that ‘we will not forgive you’. I am going to tell Supreme Court that I am in danger,” said the lawyer, Deepika Singh Rawat, who has fought for a proper investigation since the girl's body was found in January.
The Supreme Court also ordered security for the victim's family after her father said he too feared for their safety.
Two ministers from the BJP, which shares power in Jammu and Kashmir, were forced to resign after being pilloried for joining a rally in support of the accused men.
Man arrested for raping 9-yr-old girl in Gujarat
Gandhinagar, April 16 (IANS): A 24-year-old man, who was on run after raping and sodomising a 9-year-old girl in Gujarat's Rajkot district, has been arrested, police said on Monday.
According to a complaint filed by victim's mother Divyaben Madhvi, Kamlesh alias Murli Bharwad lured her daughter into his house and committed the crime.
He has confessed to the crime, a police officer said.
"Also, the culprit confessed to have committed similar act twice about a fortnight ago and threatened the girl not to inform anyone. The accused had also threatened to repeat the act if the victim informed anyone about the act," said Rajkot's Assistant Commissioner of Police Harshad Bhatt.
It was after the victim complained of unbearable pain on Sunday that her mother came to know about the ghastly incident.
Murli has been booked under various sections pertaining to rape and unnatural sex offences under the Indian Penal Code and under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, police said.
Accused plead not guilty, ask for narco analysis test
NEW DELHI, APRIL 16 (PTI): The eight people accused of raping and killing an eight-year-old in January last in Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir, on Monday pleaded not guilty and asked the judge for a narco analysis test.
As the trial in the case, which has become the focal point of outrage across the country, began in Kathua, seven of the accused were produced before District and Sessions Judge Sanjay Gupta, who asked the State Crime Branch to give them copies of the charge sheet and fixed April 28 as the next date of hearing.
The eighth accused is a juvenile, who has moved a bail application before the chief judicial magistrate. The matter was posted for April 26.
'Carefully planned strategy'
According to the charge sheet filed by the Crime Branch, the abduction, rape and killing of the girl was part of a carefully planned strategy to remove the nomadic community from the area. A separate charge sheet was filed for the juvenile.
Counsel for the accused demanded a copy of the charge sheet filed by the Crime Branch on April 9 before the chief judicial magistrate.
Immediately after the brief hearing in the sessions court, the accused were shifted back to the jail under heavy security.
Special police officer Deepak Khajuria, who is alleged to have repeatedly raped the child, said from the police van that he was also demanding a narco test, also known as the “truth test”, and a CBI probe.
As the trial began inside the court, main accused Sanji Ram’s daughter Madhu Sharma protested outside, demanding a CBI probe.
There was heavy police presence at the Kathua court complex following the tension on April 9 when members of the local bar association did not allow the Crime Branch to submit the charge sheet in the case.
Sanji Ram, caretaker of the ‘devisthan’ in the village in Kathua, about 90 km from Jammu, is listed as the main conspirator behind the crime.
He was allegedly joined by special police officers Khajuria and Surender Verma, friend Parvesh Kumar alias Mannu, Ram’s nephew, a juvenile, and his son Vishal Jangotra alias “Shamma”.
The charge sheet also names investigating officers head constable Tilak Raj and Sub-Inspector Anand Dutta, who allegedly took Rs 4 lakh from Ram and destroyed crucial evidence.
Narco analysis test
The issue of providing the accused copies of the “challan”, or the charge sheet, was raised before the judge by lawyer Ankush Sharma, who is pleading the case for Sanji Ram, his son and others
He said the charge sheet was presented in court on April 9 but copies had not yet been provided.
Ram told the judge that they wanted narco tests and were ready for them.
The judge asked the accused whether they were given copies of the charge sheet, which runs into 400 pages, added A.K. Sawahney, who is representing head constable Tilak Raj.
In a narco analysis test, the subject is injected with sodium pentothal or sodium amytal. The dose is dependent on the person’s sex, age, health and physical condition. It does not have any legal sanctity as evidence until a court gives permission to conduct these tests. The test only helps as corroborative and not as primary evidence, say legal experts.
