When the state police Crime Branch took the juvenile offender in Kathua gang-rape and murder case in custody for questioning, he initially misled them with a tutored version that he had kept the child captive in a cowshed before murdering her.
Investigators revealed to Greater Kashmir that the accused juvenile lied to them for about a week before he spilled the beans.
“His version that he had kept the girl in cowshed fell apart when we visited the cowshed. We found that it was not possible to keep girl captive in that cowshed because it is located in area where civil population is living around,” a police investigator said.
“We found that it was impossible that nobody would have come to know that the girl was kept captive there. This is wherefrom we came to the conclusion that he is narrating cock-and-bull story. This visit became a basis of our probe to go deeper into the case to reach to its bottom,” the officer said.
Later, the officer said, the juvenile broke down under sustained questioning and admitted the fact that the girl was kept captive in Devisthan (temple).
“The juvenile later cooperated throughout the probe.”
The CB investigation into the horrific rape and murder has revealed that Sanji Ram wanted his juvenile nephew to take blame on himself to save his son Vishal, who is one of the accused in the case.
The juvenile, according to the CB probe, drugged and raped the girl along with his accomplices before murdering her.
The accused juvenile offender used to take alcohol, drugs, gutka and other intoxicants and was expelled from the school where he was studying earlier, the CB probe reveals.
The officer said the Call Detail Records (CDRs) also nailed two Special Police Officers – Deepak Khajuria and SurinderVerma- who are also accused in the case.
Khajuria, according to the CB officer, denied his association with Sanji Ram’s nephew and told them he visited Rasana only on 12th and 17th of January.
“He feigned ignorance about the crime. But the pattern of his movement as per his CDR was not in consonance with what he told us during questioning,” the CB investigator said.
The investigation also revealed that another SPO, Surinder Kumar was also nailed on the basis of his CDR.
According to the probe, Kumar was found to be in constant touch with Khajuria on the days of occurrence of crime and there was sudden spike in frequency of calls between them during this period.
The charge-sheet against the accused in the case of rape and murder of an eight-year-old child in Kathua some three months earlier contains horrifying and heart-numbing detail of the gruesome crime intended at driving the nomadic Bakerwal community she belonged to out of the area.
The gruesome crime was perpetrated under detailed directions from Ram, the mastermind of the series of crimes, who also spent four lakh rupees to bribe local police officers for covering it up.