Kathua Rape Case | By Dr. Mahipal Singh Rathore

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Table of Contents

What is the case?

• On January 17,2018 – body of an eight-year-old girl, Asifa, was found in the forests near Rasana village , Hiranagar. She had been missing for a week.
• She had been abducted and brutally gang raped.
• She had been drugged so that she could not cry for help.

The arrest of local Hindus in the case has led to protests by some of the Hindu community members of Kathua and Jammu leading to communalisation of the crime and entire issue . According to the charge sheet filed by Crime branch –

The accused who hatched the conspiracy of abduction and murder –
Sanjhi Ram, a retired revenue official – the mastermind
his son Vishal, a BSc Agriculture student,
his nephew, a juvenile
Parvesh verma – an acquaintance of Sanjhi ram.
Two special police officers
Deepak Khajuria
Surrender Kumar Two other police officials
Head Constable Tilak Raj and
Sub Inspector Anand Dutta were involved in the destruction of evidence.
They destroyed crucial evidence by washing the clothes of the victim before sending them to the forensic laboratory and created false evidence at the scene.
Asifa had gone missing on January 10 while grazing horses in the forest.
Accused abducted the girl on the pretext of helping her find her horses.
The day after, parents of the girl went to Devisthan and asked Ram about her whereabouts. He said she may have gone to a relative’s house.
The juvenile, a school dropout, turned out to be a major player in the abduction and murder – even calling his cousin from Meerut to satisfy his ‘lust’
Vishal reached Rasana from Meerut after his cousin’s call and raped the sedated girl along with the juvenile and others
Khajuria (Police officer) told them to wait before killing her as “he wanted to rape her before she is killed”.

Who are Bakarwals?

The Bakarwal community is a Muslim pastoral tribe situated in Jammu and Kashmir . They form the third largest community in the state.
Bakarwal herd sheep and goats.
Bakarwals are often undertake hundreds of kilometres long journey with their cattle every summer to Kashmir and Ladakh and back to Jammu in the winters.
Muslim Gujjars of J&K continue to follow the Gotra system with names of Gotras being the same as that among the Hindus.

Hindu Ekta Manch, formed on January 23.

March – Most of the accuses are arrested
April – Protests spread across much of Kathua, with Hindu activists arguing that police officers involved in the case are Muslims, and thus can not be trusted.
10 April – Lawyers in Kathua tried to stop the filing of charge sheet in court
BJP ministers Lal Singh and Chander Prakash, who took part in a rally in support of the Kathua gang-rape accused, submitted their resignation to the J&K party chief on 13 April.

The parents of Asifa quietly abandoned their home in Rasana village out of fear late on 10 April , after the Jammu Bar Association called a strike to protest the J&K police’s “mishandling” of the investigation into the case.