Chandigarh: Shubham Sangra, prime accused in the 2018 rape and murder case of a minor nomad girl in Kathua of Jammu and Kashmir, on Wednesday withdrew his revision application from the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking bail in the heinous crime.
The Union Territory of J&K was represented by Senior Additional Advocate General Monika Kohli who was recently appointed along with three other lawyers to handle legal matters arising out of the rape and murder case of an eight-year-old nomad girl.
As the matter was to be heard before the high court, accused Sangra withdrew the revision petition challenging the high court’s earlier order denying him bail.
The trial in the rape and murder case was shifted on the directions of the Supreme Court to Pathankot in Punjab from Kathua.
The apex court had in a separate order in 2022 held that Sangra was not a juvenile at the time of the offence and should be tried as an adult, and set aside the Jammu and Kashmir High Court’s order of March 27, 2018 that had ruled that Sangra be treated as a juvenile.
At present, the sessions court is hearing on framing of charges.
With the appointment of Kohli and others, the Jammu and Kashmir administration has made it clear that it would be fighting legal battles against the culprits in the case.
Besides Kohli, two Additional Advocate General Rahul Dev Singh and Raman Sharma and special counsel Arkaj Kumar have been appointed to pursue the case.
Kohli was enrolled as an advocate on the rolls of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court from April 1999 and has been the standing counsel for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the J&K High Court and handling some sensitive cases related to terrorism.
The Crime Branch of Jammu and Kashmir Police had filed a chargesheet against Sangra and charged him with kidnapping and wrongful confinement besides murder and rape.
After being declared as an adult, Sangra was shifted from Kathua jail to a sub-district prison at Pathankot.
The minor girl was kidnapped on January 10, 2018, raped in captivity and later bludgeoned to death. The brutal crime shook the nation. Eight people, including Sangra, were named as accused.
The case against seven of the accused was earlier transferred out of Jammu and Kashmir to Pathankot on the order of the Supreme Court on May 7, 2018.
The special court on June 10, 2019 sentenced three accused – Sanji Ram, the mastermind and caretaker of the ‘devasthanam’ (temple) where the crime took place, special police officer Deepak Khajuria and civilian Parvesh Kumar – to life imprisonment “till last breath”.
Three other accused – sub-inspector Anand Dutta, head constable Tilak Raj and special police officer Surender Verma – were convicted of destruction of evidence to cover up the crime and handed down five years in jail and Rs 50,000 fine each. They are out on parole.
The seventh accused, Vishal Jangotra, son of Sanji Ram, was acquitted.
The Crime Branch’s chargesheet detailed Sangra’s alleged involvement in the horrific crime and claimed that he was responsible for an overdose of sedatives forcibly administered to the eight-year-old, rendering her “incapacitated” to resist the sexual assault on her as well as her murder.
“She was forcibly administered five tablets of Clonazepam of 0.5 mg each on January 11, 2018 which is higher than the safe therapeutic dose.
“Subsequently, more tablets were given…the signs and symptoms of an overdose may include drowsiness, confusion, impaired coordination, slow reflexes, slowed or stopped breathing, coma (loss of consciousness) and death,” a medical expert was quoted as saying in the chargesheet.
A shoddily drafted application for a birth certificate had led to the unravelling of an alleged conspiracy to proclaim Sangra as a juvenile. The inconsistencies in dates and false information in the application for a birth registration certificate filed by Sangra’s father were crucial in nailing the lie.
Senior Additional Advocate General Kohli is also the chief prosecutor in two key cases against Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Yasin Malik – the 1989 abduction of Rubaiya Sayeed, the daughter of the then Union home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, and the killing of four Indian Air Force (IAF) personnel in 1990.
She has been representing the CBI as a retainer counsel in the HC since 2015 and had successfully opposed Malik’s bail plea in the two sensational crimes which took place when militancy broke out in the Kashmir valley.
Besides the two cases, she has handled numerous matters in various courts including the Supreme Court, high courts of Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and Haryana, and Delhi, and National, State and District Consumer Protection Tribunals over the past two decades.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court had appointed Kohli as amicus curiae.
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