CBI charges 4 accused in Hathras case with gang-rape & murder

AGRA: Nearly three months after a 19-year-old Dalit girl from a village in Hathras said in her dying declaration that she had been raped by four upper caste men in her village, the CBI filed a chargesheet against the four accused. They had been arrested in September.
“The CBI filed its chargesheet in the court of special judge (SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act) BD Bharti in Hathras and invoked charges against the four accused — Sandeep, Ravi, Ramu and Lovekush,” defence counsel Munna Singh, who is representing the accused, told TOI on Friday.“The chargesheet was filed on the basis of the victim’s dying declaration.”
The four have been charged under sections 302 (murder), 376 (rape), 376A (punishment for causing death of resulting in persistent vegetative state of victim) and 376D (gang rape) of the IPC, and under Section 3(2)(v) of the SC/ST Act (offence punishable with imprisonment for a term of ten years or more against a person on the grounds that the person belongs to an SC or ST community). The court has scheduled the next hearing on January 4. The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court, which is monitoring the investigation, will take up the case on January 27.
The CBI had registered the case on October 11 and started investigating two days after that. After several field visits, statements, polygraph tests and brain electrical oscillation signature profiling (BEOSP) tests over two months, the CBI filed its 2,000-page chargesheet. “There were over 700 pages of supporting documents, the main contents of which ran for 30 pages. The witness list is four pages long,” a source told TOI. The chargesheet includes the reports of tests conducted on the four accused, including the brain electrical oscillation signature profiling done in Gujarat three weeks ago. Another CBI source said analysis of the postmortem report by central forensic experts was also done before the chargesheet was filed.
In the evening the CBI issued a statement on its chargesheet, adding, as a postscript, “The public is reminded that the above findings are based on the investigation done by CBI and evidence collected by it. Under the Indian law, the accused are presumed to be innocent till their guilt is finally established after a fair trial.”Days after the girl had died at Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital on September 29 and hastily cremated at her village past midnight without her family's consent, ADG (law and order) Prashant Kumar had said that there was “no evidence of rape” on the basis of a forensic report of samples taken 11 days after she had been allegedly raped. The main accused, Sandeep, had then written a letter from prison claiming innocence, saying he was involved with the girl and her family resented their relationship. This was around the time alleged records of calls exchanged between the girl’s elder brother and Sandeep were also leaked. Upper caste communities, meanwhile, had been mobilising support in favour of the accused. In October, a former BJP MLA had organised a “support” meet at his Hathras residence for the accused.
On Friday, the victim’s brother and sister-in-law were at Hathras court, under a CRPF security cover. In the village where they live, they are one of four Dalit families alongside 60 upper caste ones.
“This is a step forward in our quest for justice. The CBI chargesheet vindicates our stand,” the victim’s elder brother told TOI. “But actual victory will only come when the accused are punished … We have no faith left in the police. They did not treat us well. But we are happy with the investigation now.” The dead girl's sister-in-law added, "We want the DM to be removed. That's our only demand now." The DM, Praveen Kumar Laxkar, had been seen in a video purportedly asking the brother to fall in line because the media "would leave" at some point.
In the evening, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra issued a statement of support: “I am heartened to see that an important step towards providing ... justice has been taken by the CBI and hope that it will bring the victim’s family some comfort.”
(With inputs from Pathikrit Chakraborty in Lucknow)
(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme Court directives on cases related to sexual assault)