Trial in Kathua rape and murder case begins amid outrage on Monday

The trial will be conducted against eight accused who allegedly held the minor girl in captivity in a village temple in Kathua district.
The trial in the brutal gangrape and murder of an 8-year-old girl in Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir is slated to begin on Monday. The trial will be conducted against eight accused who allegedly held the minor girl in captivity in a village temple in Kathua district. The accused allegedly sedated the girl and sexually assaulted her before murdering her.
Since the accused include a juvenile, the chief judicial magistrate is expected to commit one of the chargesheets, naming seven of them, to the sessions court for trial. The trial for the juvenile will be held in the court of the CJM.
Meanwhile, a five-member committee of the Bar Council of India (BCI) will visit Kathua city in Jammu and Kashmir and submit a factual report on the case after seeking time from the Supreme Court on April 19. An announcement in this regard was made by BCI chief Manan Mishra on Sunday.
The fact-finding team will include former BCI chief Tarun Agarwal, BCI co-chairmen S Prabakaran and Ramachandra G Shah, and members Razia Beig of the Bar Council of Uttrakhand and Naresh Dikshit, an advocate.
They will visit the state and reach out to office-bearers of the Bar Associations of Jammu and Kathua and also meet the affected families and the common people to figure out what actually transpired, Mishra told reporters.
In a related development, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Sunday accepted the resignations of two controversial BJP ministers Chandra Prakash Ganga and Lal Singh who had participated in a rally in support of the people arrested in connection with the recent rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in Kathua district.
The resignations of the two ministers were received from BJP state chief Sat Sharma this morning which were immediately accepted and forwarded to Governor NN Vohra for completing the procedural formalities, the J&K Chief Minister’s office was quoted as saying.
An eight-year-old girl belonging to the nomadic community had gone missing on January 10 while grazing horses in Rasana forest in Kathua’s Hiranagar area. Her body was found a week later. Police investigations revealed she was held captive inside a temple, sedated and repeatedly raped before her murder.