The Rajasthan Police have filed a chargesheet in the gangrape and murder case of a 14-year-old girl in the Bhilwara district last month, The Times of India reported. The girl’s body was found on August 2 near a furnace where she had allegedly been set on fire by a group of men after raping her.
Kotari Deputy Superintendent of Police Shyam Sunder Bishnoi on Saturday placed a chargesheet running into over 400 pages before a special court in the newly-formed Shahpura district. Nine persons have been named as accused in the chargesheet. A separate chargesheet will be filed against two minor accused persons, the police said.
A forensic examination suggested that the girl was still alive when the accused men put her into the furnace, Bishnoi said, according to PTI. “She could be unconscious but she was alive,” he said. “So, Indian Penal Code section 326 [voluntarily causing grievous hurt] was added in the FIR.”
The police took the help of forensic experts to establish that the girl had been gangraped before being burnt. A petroleum-based chemical was poured on her body before she was set on fire, the police said.
The next hearing before the court is slated on September 8.
After the girl’s body was found last month, her family members had alleged that the police did not take timely action after even after a missing complaint had been filed. Her uncle claimed that if the police had acted immediately, the girl “may have been alive now, or at least we would have got her body for the last rites”.
According to the girl’s family, when they went to file a police complaint, the authorities did not initially file a missing complaint, but asked them to come back with the girl’s age proof, marksheets and other documents.
As the family kept searching for the girl, they found some bones and jewellery in a coal furnace in the Kotari area.
The incident had sparked political outrage, with the Bharatiya Janata Party accusing the Gehlot-led Congress government of being negligent about women’s security.
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