Minor nomad girl’s tragic end stirs hornets’ nest in Jammu

With former BJP ministers Chowdhary Lal Sinagh and Chander Prakash Ganga, who resigned recently under pressure, out on the streets in Jammu asking for a CBI probe into the gruesome murder and gang-rape of a Muslim minor girl, the crisis for Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti is far from over. Jammu is witnessing a lot of protests in favour of the accused in the case.

Meanwhile, the crime branch sleuths have provided to the court all the evidence they claim to have gathered about the “ganging up of upper caste Hindus of Samba and Kathua to scare away Muslim nomads from the hilly areas of these two districts”. The crime branch in its report to the court has said that there was a pattern and the main accused Sanji Ram has been seizing goats and cattle from Muslim nomads and releasing them after collecting a fine of Rs 1,000 from them and sometimes even sending them to police. The crime branch apparently faced a lot of difficulties in collecting the evidence from Rasana village, as not only the witnesses were hostile but so was the entire population of the area, one of the crime branch officers told this reporter. The crime branch has also claimed that Sanji Ram had withdrawn Rs 10 lakh from the bank and spent few lakh of rupees on the sleuths of Hira Nagar police station for destruction of evidence.

Talib Hussain, a young Gujjar tribe lawyer and social activist, claimed to the the media that he was beaten up by BJP supporters in Udhampur, when he went there to participate in a television programme along with the victim’s family.

Chowdhary Lal Singh told the media that he will not stop unless the case was transferred to the CBI as he believed that Mehbooba Mufti “transported” Kashmiri police officers to implicate BJP supporters in this case. Lal Singh said that he was for the arrest of the real culprits as he believed that so far only innocent people have been framed by Kashmiri police officers.

Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh on Thursday said that the case should be investigated thoroughly and the real culprits should be booked, echoing the larger sentiments of his party workers in Jammu. Nirmal Singh also blamed Pakistan for engineering trouble in the entire state over this issue and said that their government would not allow such designs to succeed.