THE DELHI POLICE HAS READIED A 1000-PAGE CHARGESHEET
The chargesheet will be submitted in a sealed envelope
before the Metropolitan Magistrate and the fast-track court will hold an
in-camera trial in the case. The statement given by the braveheart to the
Sub-Divisional Magistrate, while she was undergoing treatment at Safdarjung
Hospital in the national capital, and by her friend are slated to be the key
evidence to nail the six accused in the barbaric case.The Delhi Police will on
Thursday submit its 1000-page chargesheet in the brutal gangrape and murder
case of a 23-year-old girl before a Metropolitan Magistrate court. Once the Metropolitan
Magistrate court takes cognizance of the case, it will move to the designated
fast-track court in Delhi. The chargesheet is also likely to be shown to the
Chief Justice of High Court in the morning
The
hearing in the gangrape case will take place on a day-to-day basis with no
adjournments at a fast-track court, which was inaugurated by Chief Justice of
India at Saket on Wednesday. The prosecution has said that it will try to
finish the trial in a month even as the Saket District Court Bar Association on
Wednesday passed a resolution saying none of the lawyers would defend any of
the accused in the brutal gangrape case.While inaugurating the fast-track
courts at Saket, the Chief Justice of India had sharp words for the police and
a word of caution for protesters. He said, "If the Supreme Court directive
to remove tinted glasses (from buses) was followed strictly, this may not have
happened." He further said: "Some people are demanding that we should
hang them immediately. But we must balance things. Let us not get carried away.
We must restore the faith of the people in the judiciary."
Meanwhile,
the Delhi Police Commissioner on Wednesday appeared before the Parliament
Committee on Women Empowerment and announced that every police station in the
city will have one designated policeman to deal with crimes against women. Both
the government and the police have been under a lot of pressure since the
gangrape case of the paramedical student came to light. There have been
protests across the nation demanding stricter laws for sexual offences and
harsher punishments for accused.The Delhi Police has readied a 1000-page
chargesheet and will be citing 30 witnesses in the case. In the chargesheet,
the police have mentioned the entire sequence of events from the time the prime
accused, Ram Singh, and five others had a party at their place and then took
the bus out at night just to earn a few bucks to buy more alcohol. Apart from
Ram Singh, while one of the accused is a minor, the others are Pawan Gupta,
Vinay Sharma, Mukesh and Akshay Singh alias Thakur.According to the
chargesheet, the girl and her friend got into the bus at the Munirka bus stop,
after which some of the accused made lewd comments and it led to an argument
between the two groups. As the argument got heated, the girl and the boy were
assaulted by the accused. While the boy was hit with a rod, the girl was
gangraped.
All
the six accused in the case have been booked for dacoity, gangrape, murder and
destruction of evidence. The police have decided to ask for the maximum
punishment for the accused in the case. However, one of the accused is a minor
and he will be produced before a juvenile justice board and can be sent to a
children's home for a maximum of three years. The police, meanwhile, have
decided to go for a bone marrow test of the sixth accused to determine his real
age.For evidence, the police will be using statements of the girl and her
friend, girl's ATM cards and jewellery and the medical report which says the
injuries were grievous enough to cause death. They also have the CCTV footage
and forensic evidence picked up from the bus.
The
police have also arrested Dinesh Yadav - the owner of the bus in which the
crime was committed - for violating rules to get permit. The police registered
a case of cheating against him and picked him up from his residence in
Rasoolpur Nawada village near Sector 62 in Noida.The braveheart had succumbed
to her injuries at the Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore at 2:15 am on
December 29 after struggling against all odds and fighting for her survival for
12 days. The odds were stacked against her as she had suffered significant
brain injury, intestinal damage, cardiac arrests and multiple organ failure.
Her small intestine had to be removed by the doctors at Safdarjung Hospital
where she was under treatment for 10 days before she was airlifted to Singapore
for further treatment.
The
body of the braveheart was laid to rest in the national capital amid heavy
deployment of Delhi Police and RAF personnel after she was brought from
Singapore in a special aircraft of Air India. Delhi Chief Minister Sheila
Dikshit, Minister of State for Home Affairs RPN Singh, West Delhi MP Mahabal
Mishra, Delhi BJP chief Vijender Gupta had also attended the last rites on
Sunday. Media was not allowed at the site.The case sparked nationwide protests
as people from all walks of communities, including students, professionals and
NGOs from across the country came out to show their solidarity to the
braveheart and demand justice for her. The protesters also called for a
stronger anti-rape law to ensure that such incidents did not happen in future.Though
the protests across the country have been peaceful, on December 23, the
protests had turned violent, leading to a lathicharge by the Delhi Police.
While several protesters were injured, a police constable, Subhash Tomar, was
admitted at the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital after the protests, where he died.
The death of the constable sparked a controversy, with the post mortem report
and the Delhi Police saying that his cardiac arrest was induced by serious
injuries, and the eyewitnesses countering the claims saying the constable had
suffered no injuries at all.
