HC to hear parents’ plea for judicial probe into Dalit girl’s rape-murder

They parents have also demanded probe by a special investigation team into the incident.

The petition, filed through advocate Jitendra Kumar Jha, is listed for hearing before Justice Yogesh Khanna. In their plea, the parents have alleged that the police delayed lodging the first information report (FIR), and that they were made to sit in the police station in between the intervening night of August 1-2.

They petition said that even though the police reached the crematorium, they were focussing on “hushing up” the case. They petition said that the girl’s parents were forced by the police to keep quiet about the rape, and say that their daughter died of electrocution.

“The petitioners were taken to the police station and throughout the night they were kept there and were tortured and pressured by the police to compromise the case,” the plea said, adding that the police arrested the accused but did not seek police custody for them.

The parents have said that despite the case being transferred to the crime branch, they do not have faith in the present investigation and that the truth can only be proved by a court monitored special investigation team (SIT).

The police have earlier denied allegations of laxity, saying all actions as per the law were being taken in the case. The police have informed a city court that it is yet to find any evidence to confirm that the girl was raped before she was allegedly murdered and forcibly cremated.

The court noted that the investigating officer has admitted that neither any statement of any eye-witness nor any other evidence, including medical or scientific, could be collected so far to confirm as to whether the victim child was raped or not.

The police also said that it only had the disclosure statement of two of the four accused admitting to the crime.

“..the IO has stated that the disclosure statements of the four accused persons have revealed that accused Radhey Shyam and Kuldeep Singh had raped & killed the minor child victim and that the remaining two accused, namely Salim Ahmad and Laxmi Narayan, had helped them in trying to cremate the deceased minor child,” said court noted.

On August 1, the girl was raped and killed allegedly by a priest and three of his male associates at the crematorium in Purani Nangal village near Delhi cantonment in southwest Delhi. The four men then cremated her body allegedly without her parents’ consent or the police being informed.

The accused claimed that the girl died of electrocution while fetching water from a cooler but the family alleges that the suspects hurriedly cremated the body after raping her.

The accused have been booked under Sections 302 (murder), 376 (rape) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code, along with the relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and the SC/ST Act.