“I hope the Supreme Court looks into the matter and takes some action as no one is hearing our petition,” Akthar told PTI.
Yusuf claims that efforts were being made to dilute the case to the extent that all the culprits were out. “When the accused are out on bail, I fear that one day, I will be booked under some frivolous charge and thrown into jail. They are very powerful people,” he said.
“Already rumours have started doing the rounds that the case was going to be re-investigated by the CBI and all the accused will be out on bail,” Yusuf alleged.
The case triggered a nationwide outrage when the eight-year-old girl was found murdered on 17 January, 2018. After initial hiccups, the case was handed over to the crime branch on January 27 of the same year which unravelled the conspiracy behind the heinous crime where the little girl was kidnapped and brutally raped for four days before being killed in a barbaric manner.
The Supreme Court, had in 2018, directed the case to be shifted out of Jammu and Kashmir and ordered the sessions court in Pathankot to hear it on a daily basis.
Sanji Ram, the mastermind and caretaker of the ‘devasthanam’ (temple) where the crime took place in January 2018, Deepak Khajuria, a special police officer, and Parvesh Kumar, a civilian, were sentenced to life imprisonment till their last breath for the ghastly crime, while three policemen, Dutta, Raj and SPO Suriender Kumar, were awarded five years’ imprisonment for destroying evidence in June 2019.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court, earlier this month, suspended the remaining sentences of Dutta and Raj, pending hearing on their appeals against the verdict.
Justices Tejinder Singh Dhindsa and Vinod S Bhardwaj said in separate orders that both Dutta and Raj have been on parole for 11 months and nine months respectively.
Senior advocate R S Cheema, appearing for the Jammu and Kashmir government, and advocate Manbir Basra had objected to the suspension of the sentence, saying the accused could tamper with evidence and create a law and order situation.
However, in a near-identical order in both the petitions, the division bench ruled out the apprehension of Cheema about the possibility of a breach of peace, saying it “seems misconceived in as much as the applicant has availed of parole” during the period of his custody.
The sentences of the two convicts were suspended, and they were released on bail under provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code.
Both Akthar and Yusuf had approached the high court in 2019 for enhancing the sentences of all the six accused besides challenging the sessions court’s order of releasing Sanji Ram’s son Vishal.
“There have been some hearings but because of the COVID-19 pandemic, everything is delayed,” Basra said.
A 15-page charge sheet filed in April 2018 said the eight-year-old girl was kidnapped on January 10 that year and was raped in captivity in a small village temple, exclusively manned by Ram, after keeping her sedated for four days. She was later bludgeoned to death, it said.
