New Delhi: Relations between Hindus and Bakerwal Muslims in Kathua, Jammu, were strained in the days before an eight-year-old girl was raped and murdered there last year, the Pathankot judge had concluded while holding six suspects guilty Monday.
ThePrint has exclusively accessed the trial court’s verdict, where sessions judge Tejwinder Singh noted that it “was manifest from the background of the area that strain (sic) relations between local residents and backward community exists”.
The prosecution had claimed in court that the crime was part of a conspiracy to expel the Bakerwals, a nomadic community comprising Muslim Gujjars, from three villages, including Rasana, where the rape and murder took place. The court’s statement is noted in the section of the judgment that dwells on the motive behind the crime.
In arriving at his judgment, the judge made special mention of the evidence presented by Jammu & Kashmir Crime Branch personnel.
“The statements supports (sic) and proves the fact that there was a communal tension in the particular area where the occurrence took place,” the judge noted, adding that the Bakerwal community was not accepted by local residents of the area.
“As such, the court is of the conclusion that there was a strong motive behind this occurrence,” he stated in the verdict.
The Jammu & Kashmir Crime Branch had cited police cases filed against members of the minority community to prove that there was conflict between local Hindus and Bakerwals.
One FIR accused a Bakerwal of crop damage, while another claimed a member of the community had “slaughtered a calf and kept the head of the calf in his residence thereby hurting the sentiments of a particular community”. Both FIRs date back around two years.
The defence tried to rebut these charges, but the judge said there was “nothing on record which could show that there is a false implication of accused persons in this case”.
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The conspiracy
The eight-year-old victim of the crime was abducted, confined in a temple, gang-raped and killed at Kathua’s Rasana village in January last year. However, as Hindu residents emerged as suspects in the crime, the case took on communal overtones, with members of the local BJP unit questioning the Crime Branch probe and demanding the CBI’s intervention.
Eight suspects were eventually identified, including a juvenile. The seven adults among them were on trial at the Pathankot court, six of whom were convicted Monday and one acquitted.
Three of them — local leader Sanjhi Ram, special police officer Deepak Khajuria, and Parvesh Kumar, a friend of Ram’s juvenile nephew — have been convicted of murder and gang rape and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Three others — special police officer Surender Kumar, sub-inspector Anand Dutta and head constable Tilak Raj — have been sentenced to a five-year jail term for destruction of evidence. The one acquitted is Sanjhi Ram’s son Vishal Jangotra.
According to the prosecution, the juvenile had been roughed up by the Bakerwals on an earlier occasion for allegedly teasing a girl from their community. Khajuria, too, they claimed, had had arguments with members of the community. All of this, the Crime Branch said, was used by Sanjhi Ram to provoke his co-conspirators.
On the basis of the inputs given by the juvenile and the other accused, police determined that it was somewhere in the first week of January that Sanjhi Ram decided to put in place “a plan to dislodge the Bakerwal community”. The rape and murder was carried out later the same month.
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In some ways, this makes the crime even more evil. Poison is seeping into our aquifers. It will sicken our entire society.