New Delhi: The trial in the gruesome Kathua rape and murder case begins today, April 16 against eight of the accused. The eight allegedly held an eight-year-old girl captive in a small village temple in the Kathua district of Jammu for a week in January this year, during which she was not fed, was kept sedated and sexually assaulted before being bludgeoned to death.
The accused include a juvenile against whom a separate charge sheet was filed. The chief judicial magistrate of Kathua will be committing one of the charge sheets, in which seven people have been named, to the sessions court for trial as mandated under the law. The chief judicial magistrate will, however, hold the trial for the juvenile as it is the designated court under the juvenile act, according to officials.
The Jammu and Kashmir government has appointed two special public prosecutors, both Sikhs, for the trial in the sensitive case, a move being seen as made to ensure “neutrality” in view of Hindu-Muslim polarisation over the case.
The trial is expected to go smoothly after the Jammu Bar association as well as the Kathua Bar received a rap on the knuckles by the Supreme Court (SC) on April 13 as the apex court took a strong note of some lawyers obstructing the judicial process in the case. The SC initiated a case on its own record saying such impediment “affects the dispensation of justice and would amount to obstruction of access to justice”.
Inputs from PTI
