The Delhi High Court on Tuesday sought a status report from the Delhi Police on its investigation into the alleged rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl inside a crematorium in Delhi Cantonment earlier in August.
Justice Yogesh Khanna, who was hearing a plea by the parents of the victim, however, declined to pass, at this stage, any direction for a court-monitored Special Investigation Team (SIT) investigation into the case as an SIT had already been constituted by the Delhi Police Crime Branch.
The court also took on record statements made by the Delhi government’s standing counsel Sanjay Lao that Section 302 (murder), Section 376 (rape), Section 3 (punishments for offences of atrocities) of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, and Section 6 (sexual assault) Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act had been added in the FIR.
Advocate Jitendra Kumar Jha, representing the parents of the victim, stated that two of the accused had admitted to the crime. He said that the incident took around 5.30 p.m. on August 1 but the police took more than five hours to reach the spot.
On the day of the incident, Mr. Jha said, the mother was called by one of the four accused to come to a crematorium in Purani Nangal village, where she found her daughter lying on a table. He said the four accused informed the mother that her daughter died of electrocution and tried to convince her not to inform the police.
Mr. Jha said that the mother saw cut marks on the hand of her daughter, bleeding from the nose and the lips were black. The counsel said the minor girl was thrown into the burning pyre, after which the mother raised a hue and cry inside the crematorium.
Following the mother’s uproar, people from the locality gathered there. However, the police came only at around 11.30 p.m. Mr. Jha questioned why the police took more than five hours to reach the spot when the nearest police station was barely a kilometre away.
“The police reached there but the total focus of the police was to hush up/sabotage the case. The petitioners were taken to the police station and throughout the night they were tortured and pressured by the police and their agents to compromise the case,” the petition claimed.
The FIR was registered only the next morning at around 9. “What was the delay in registration of the FIR? There is no explanation,” Mr. Jha said.
Despite the fact that the case is now transferred to the Crime Branch of Delhi Police, the petitioners had no faith in the present investigation, the plea said, adding “the truth can be proved only by a court-monitored SIT”.
Mr. Lao said that both the prayers — safety and security for the parents and forming of an SIT — had already been done. The court said that the security of the parents will continue till further orders. It will hear the case again on November 10.
Published - August 17, 2021 01:25 pm IST
