Chandigarh: Nearly nine months after the Kotkhai rape case, a Himachal resident and nine policemen, including inspector general of police, were sent to judicial remand for a week by a sessions court on Wednesday.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) also arrested one Anil Kumar whose DNA sample showed 100% match with the genetic material recovered from the body of the victim and the crime scene.
Accused Neelu, who was arrested on April 13, was produced in the court amid tight security. The nine policemen were also produced before the court of chief judicial magistrate Ranjit Singh.
During the probe, the investigating agency found that the five people arrested in the case by the Kotkhai police were not involved in the crime.
The court has sent the police officers to judicial remand till May 1, while the accused will stay in remand till May 7.
The accused cops have asked for another copy of the chargesheet filed by the CBI. Ex IG Zahoor Zaidi, one of the accused in the case, has said that some of the pages of the copy of the chargesheet given to him are not readable.
The court has also asked CBI to issue copy of the chargesheet once again and the matter will proceed in the next hearing. The investigating agency will submit a status report in the case in the high court.
A 16-year-old girl had gone missing while returning from school on July 4, 2017 from Haliala forest in Kotkhai area of Shimla district. Her naked body was found in the forest on July 6 and the postmortem report confirmed rape.
The virtually blind rape and murder case of the girl had become a political rallying point in the then poll-bound Himachal Pradesh when the body of the girl was found in the forests of Kotkhai area in July last year.
The local police had arrested some suspects but the CBI probe exonerated them as they had come clean during lie detector tests.
(with inputs from PTI)
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