Kathua Rape: Minor Accused Denied Bail, Court Says Crime Not ‘Juvenile’

The juvenile is among the eight people arrested for kidnapping, gangraping and murdering an eight-year-old girl in Kathua in January 2018. The alleged juvenile offender had sought the bail on the ground of his age.

Kathua (Jammu and Kashmir), Apr 25: A local court in Kathua on Tuesday denied bail to the juvenile accused in the Kathua gangrape and murder case observing that the crime is not juvenile. The juvenile is among the eight people arrested for kidnapping, gangraping and murdering an eight-year-old girl in Kathua in January 2018. The alleged juvenile offender had sought the bail on the ground of his age.

During the court proceedings, Chief Judicial Magistrate Amarjeet Singh Langeh said that the accused ins a juvenile and thus, his application should be considered under Section 13 of Juvenile Justice Act. The judge, however, said that the Juvenile Act also mentions the grounds on which the bail application could be rejected.

Bail of a juvenile could be rejected if a) his release could possibly bring him in contact with any of the other criminal, (b) his release could expose “moral, physical, or psychological danger” or (c) his release on bail could serve as a defeat to justice.

“In the process of determination as to whether release of juvenile on bail would defeat ends of justice or not, factors like depravity or crime, its horrific nature and resultant public outrage, violence wrought on the victim and manner in which (a) child of flesh and blood was brutalized cannot be muffled,” the judge said. He added that the “scales of justice are hugely tilted against the application as of now”.

According to the Crime Branch charge sheet, the juvenile accused had played a key role in the abduction, rape and gruesome murder of the girl. The other accused arrested in the case include local resident Sanji Ram, his son Vishal Sharma and two special police officers.

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.