Kathua Rape And Murder: Accused Who Had Claimed to be Juvenile Will be Tried as Adult, Says Court

The medical report was submitted before the court earlier this week

New Delhi, Jul 5: In a major development in Kathua rape-cum-murder case, the Pathankot district and sessions court ruled on Thursday that the accused who claimed to be a juvenile will be tried as an adult. A medical test had found that the accused was aged over 20.

Rejecting the plea of Defence counsel, District and Sessions Judge Tajwinder Singh said the accused, Parvesh Kumar alias ‘Mannu’, will be treated as an adult. The medical report was submitted before the court earlier this week by the Jammu and Kashmir police’s crime branch after it resumed post-summer break.

The district and sessions judge had issued directions to the crime branch to conduct a bone ossification test to ascertain the age of Kumar, one of the eight accused in the brutal rape-and-murder case of an eight-year-old nomadic girl in Kathua district of Jammu and Kashmir in January.

Special Public Prosecutor J K Chopra said the court has declined Kumar’s application and declared the accused as a ‘major’.  While Kumar’s counsel A K Sawhney told reporters outside the court that they would be challenging the verdict of the trial court in the Supreme Court soon. (ALSO READ: I Miss my Daughter Everyday, Says Kathua Rape Victim’s Father)

“The fate of another accused, who has claimed to be a juvenile, is yet to be decided as the matter was pending before the Jammu and Kashmir High Court after the crime branch moved an application urging him to be treated as an adult based on his medical reports.

The court had ordered the test after the defence counsel moved an application in the first week of June, requesting to treat him as a minor citing his matriculation certificate. The crime branch had constituted a team of doctors, comprising medicos from various streams including the radiology department, and the accused was examined on June 22 and 23.

The court had directed Senior Superintendent of Police R K Jalla to supervise the medical examination and submit the report when the court reopens after a 16-day summer break.

While seven of the accused, including Kumar, are facing trial in the court here on the directions of the Supreme Court, the eighth accused in the case is facing trial in a juvenile court in Kathua district.

Meet the Accused involved in this heinous crime:
A special team of the crime branch had made a case of conspiracy, kidnapping, wrongful confinement, gang rape, murder and destruction of evidence against eight accused, which include: Sanjhi Ram, the suspected mastermind, who is a former revenue official and local strongman; his son Vishal Kumar, a college student; Ram’s 16-year-old nephew who is the juvenile, and his friend Parvesh Kumar; Special Police Officers (SPOs) of Hiranagar police station Deepak Khajuria and Surinder Kumar; Sub Inspector of Hiranagar police station Anand Dutta, who was also investigating officer in the case, and Head Constable Tilak Raj.

Incident:
In January, an eight-year-old girl was abducted, sedated, gangraped and then murdered in Kathua district of Jammu and Kashmir. Her body was recovered from a forest on January 17, a week after she had gone missing while grazing horses in the forest area. According to the charge sheet, the underage accused, a school dropout, had lured the girl to a desolate place on the false pretext of helping her in finding her missing horses, held her captive at ‘devisthan’ where she was drugged and allegedly raped by him, Vishal and SPO on different occasions before being brutally killed. The ‘horrific’ incident of child jolted the country leading to massive protests.