kathua gang rape: 8 year old Muslim Bakarwal girl raped repeatedly before being killed.

The eight-year-old nomadic Muslim Bakarwal girl was kidnapped on January 10 in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua while grazing horses near her home, held captive in a temple, sedated and raped repeatedly before being killed in a plot hatched by the main suspect, a retired government official, officials have said.

The charge sheet filed by the crime branch of the Jammu and Kashmir (J-K) police before the chief judicial magistrate in Kathua district on Monday night on the rape and murder of the girl reveals the depravity of the crime, which has polarised the Jammu region on communal lines.

Sanji Ram planned the abduction because he wanted the Bakarwals to panic and move out of Rassana village in the Hiranagar tehsil of Kathua district, said the charge sheet. He enticed his nephew, a school dropout, into committing the crime, it added.

A police sub-inspector, a head constable and two special police officers were charged along with former revenue department official Sanji Ram, his nephew, son and a friend of the nephew’s. The nephew was first identified as a juvenile although the charge sheet said a DNA test showed him to be 19-years-old.

The policemen were supposed to help destroy evidence and cover up the crime in exchange for bribes.

The girl was held in a temple identified as Devasthan, run by Sanji Ram, after she was



kidnapped, drugged constantly and subjected to multiple rapes including gang rape.

The nephew informed Sanji Ram’s son Vishal Jangotra in Meerut over the phone about the abduction of the girl and asked him to come back “if he wanted to satisfy his lust”.The girl was held in the temple until January 14 before the nephew strangled her to death and bludgeoned her with a stone to make sure she was dead, said the charge sheet.

It added that before she was killed, one of the accused asked his accomplices to “wait” as he also wanted to rape the girl. Her body was found on January 17 not too far from Devasthan.

According to the charge sheet, “whatever surfaced in the course of investigation leads to the irresistible conclusion” that the eight “undoubtedly committed offences” including kidnapping, wrongful confinement, gang rape, murder and tampering with evidence.

It also mentions that investigators along with forensic experts and a first-class executive magistrate visited the crime scene and a minute examination of the locations, including Devasthan, led to the recovery of blood stained wooden sticks and hair strands.

A few hair strands recovered from Devasthan and the nearby forest where the body was dumped, were sent to New Delhi for a DNA profiling. One of the strands from Devasthan matched with the girl’s DNA profile.