Six people were on Monday convicted for rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua in January last year.
Main accused Sanji Ram was among six men convicted for the brutal rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua. Ram is a retired revenue official.
According to the police, the girl’s abduction, rape and killing was a part of a strategy to remove the minority nomadic community from the area. She had been kept captive under sedation for four days and raped repeatedly. Later she was strangled and bludgeoned to death.
The episode shocked and disturbed the entire nation and led to street protests calling for justice for the child.
The in-camera trial in the case had ended on June 3, when District and Sessions Judge Tejwinder Singh had announced that the verdict would be delivered today.
People’s Democratic Party leader Mehbooba Mufti welcomed the judgement in a tweet and said, “High time we stop playing politics over a heinous crime where an 8-year-old child was drugged, raped repeatedly & then bludgeoned to death. Hope loopholes in our judicial system are not exploited & culprits get exemplary punishment.”
After the court convicted six for rape and murder of 8-year-old, Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah also took to his twitter account and tweeted, “Amen to that. The guilty deserve the most severe punishment possible under law. And to those politicians who defended the accused, vilified the victim & threatened the legal system no words of condemnation are enough. #KathuaRapeCase.”
