India, (10/6/2019): Six people were on Monday convicted for rape and murder of 8-year-old girl in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua that had outraged the country as the chilling details of the crime were revealed in police investigations.
The girl, according to the police, had been kidnapped as part of a strategy to remove the minority nomadic community from the area, had been overdosed with a cocktail of sedatives through her captivity and raped repeatedly. Four days later, she was strangled and bludgeoned with a stone to make sure she was dead.
The girl was kidnapped on 10 January 2018 and kept in captivity till 14 January when she was killed. Her body was found in a forested area near Kathua on January 17
The rape and murder trial was shifted out of Jammu and Kashmir to a special court in Punjab’s Pathankot on the orders of the Supreme Court. The girl’s parents had approached the top court to get the case transferred out of the state because they feared for the lives of the family, friends and witnesses.
The six men convicted by the Pathankot judge include Sanji Ram, a retired revenue department official who was accused of being the key conspirator. According to the police, he wanted to drive the nomadic Bakarwal community from his native Rasana village and incited his nephew to abduct the girl.
The in-camera trial in the case was completed on June 3 after the defence concluded its arguments
