Alwaght- India’s Supreme Court on Monday ordered the trial of eight Hindu men accused of the rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl to be moved out of the mostly Muslim-populated Kashmir state.
Asifa Bano, from a nomadic Muslim community that roams the forests of Indian Kashmir, was drugged, held captive in a Hindu temple and sexually assaulted for a week before being strangled and battered to death with a stone in January, Reuters reported.
The innocent girl's body was found lay in bushes in the forest On the morning of 17 January.
Her case caused a wave of revulsion around the country but also exposed communal divisions after two former ministers of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party, pan-Hindu nationalistParty, joined a rally in support of the eight accused Hindus, saying they were innocent.
According to the charge sheet, the kidnapping, rape and killing of the girl was part of a plan to drive the nomads out of Kathua district in Jammu, the mostly Hindu region of India’s only Muslim majority state.
One of the accused murderers is a retired local government official and two are police officers.
The victim’s relatives said they feared retribution if they pursued her case in the small town of Kathua, near where the girl was killed.
A bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said the trial would be held in Pathankot in the neighboring state of Punjab, and in camera, so that witnesses could be assured of protection.
“We are transferring the case to Pathankot from Kathua for a fair trial,” the court said in its order. The case will be heard daily so that an early verdict can be reached, in a country where such cases can run for years, or even decades.
“The basic concern is fair trial, basic concern is speedy trial. That is the reason the court said there will be day-to-day hearing,” said Deepika Singh Rajawat, lawyer for the girl’s family.
Rajawat had said she herself faced the risk of personal attack for taking up the case of the girl.
India reels from a string of violent sexual crimes. In most recent cases two girl were raped and burnt in Indian state of Jharkhand.
Today, police said a 17-year-old girl in is in a critical condition after she was raped and then set on fire. The girl is undergoing treatment in hospital after suffering 95% burn injuries, BBC reported.
A local man has been arrested in connection with the attack.
It is the second such incident to be reported in Jharkhand in recent days - another teenage girl who police say was raped and burned alive died on Sunday.
India introduced the death penalty for rapists of girls below the age of 12 last month in response to the outrage over the gang rape of the girl in Kathua. The law does not apply retrospectively.
About 40,000 rape cases were reported in India in 2016.
