The Jammu and Kashmir Police sub-inspector (SI) who had been convicted for destroying evidence in the 2018 Kathua rape case, was granted bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Bar and Bench reported.
SI Anand Dutta was one of the six accused convicted for taking a bribe worth Rs 4 lakh from Sanji Ram for sabotaging the evidence involved in the Kathua rape case in 2018. In June 2019, a sessions court in Punjab’s Pathankot had sentenced Dutta to five years’ imprisonment.
Dutta had challenged the order in the High Court claiming that he was being falsely implicated in the case. His counsel said that Dutta was not the station house officer (SHO) of the police station where the rape complaint was filed.
On Monday, 20 December a bench of Justices Tejinder Singh Dhindsa and Vinod S Bhardwaj suspended Dutta’s sentence for the rest of his jail term and granted him bail.
On January 10, 8-year-old Asifa Bano was abducted by a group of six men, who sedated and raped her inside a temple. She was assaulted repeatedly by the men, including two police officers. She was later strangulated and was gang-raped once again before her head was smashed with a stone.
The girl was allegedly abducted on January 10 and killed four days later. Her body was found near Kathua on January 17.
Related
