Kotkhai rape case: CBI says DNA led us to suspect, High Court says hand us affidavit

The bench asked Verma to file the affidavit by May 8 and will decide whether he will be summoned to the HC after going through it. Last month, the CBI Director was asked to appear before the bench on May 9. The contents of the status report were not made public and handed over in a sealed cover. “His (accused) DNA sample matched 100 per cent with the genetic material recovered from the body of the victim and the crime scene,” said a CBI official.

The court, however, was not convinced with the CBI status report and insisted that it will call the CBI Director for his personal presence as had been decided earlier. CBI counsel Nikhil Goyal said: “This is the final status report, I am giving the deadline also to file the chargesheet by July 9, well before the expiry of the mandatory 90 days period. Let me go on record that Director (CBI) has seen and approved the status report. He has also been monitoring the probe.”

READ | CBI takes suspect to forest area where victim’s body was found

Sources in the CBI said they identified the suspect, Anil Kumar, by tracing the age group and lineage of samples found at the crime scene and through call intercepts. Following Kumar’s arrest, the agency has also virtually given a clean chit to six suspects — one had died in police custody — arrested by police. CBI sources said blood samples of the suspects arrested by local police did not match those collected from the crime spot. Eight policemen, including an Inspector General of Police, allegedly involved in the first arrests and the custodial death are currently in jail.

On July 4 last year, a 16-year-old girl went missing while returning from school in Shimla district. Her body was found two days later from the Halaila forests of Kotkhai. The incident had triggered uproar in the state.

According to CBI sources, it had constituted a 40-member team supervised by a joint director to crack the case. It also questioned almost 2,000 people. Sources said this helped profile 250 suspects, which included people who knew the girl, her relatives, those who frequented the area where the incident occurred and people from nearby areas, including those with criminal records.

READ | Himachal High Court asks CBI to file affidavit by May 8

Blood samples of all of them were taken and sent to the CBI’s Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) to match samples taken from a liquor bottle found at the crime scene and blood and semen samples found on the victim’s clothes.
When not a single sample matched, FSL scientists began “percentage” and “lineage sampling”. This process involves zeroing in on samples showing similarities with the ones found at the crime scene. It was also ascertained from the crime scene sample that the suspect was an adult in the age group of 25-45 years of age, sources said.

The samples partially matched with samples collected from a family in Kangra. “To make sure we were closing in on the right family, further sampling was done separately for parental and maternal lineage. This led us to the man we were looking for,” said a CBI officer.

The suspect was identified as Anil Kumar, a 25-year-old woodcutter from the area with a criminal record, including attempted murder. He was released on bail in September 2016 and had been absconding since. The CBI then shifted focus to find him. “We made a list of his probable points of contact. As many as 80 phones were put on surveillance and key people associated to him shadowed. It was a waiting game,” said the officer. As the CBI monitored calls, they realised the suspect always used phones borrowed from strangers and gave misleading clues about his location. The probe team then tracked every phone used to make these calls and questioned the owners. Based on these interrogations, a rough profile of the suspect was built.

READ | CBI cracks Kotkhai rape case, arrests 25-year-old man after 100 per cent DNA match

In mid-April, Kumar made another call and this time a team was rushed to the location of the phone in Rohru. The CBI found the calls were coming from a farmhouse where several labourers worked. After spending some time at the farmhouse and chatting up the owners, the team zeroed in on one labourer who matched the profile they had built. Kumar was thus apprehended on April 13.

During questioning, sources said, Kumar confirmed he was at the crime scene and that that he had been working at a village about eight km from there.

READ | Kotkhai custodial death: Himachal govt nod to CBI for prosecution of 8 cops

Investigations have found that the victim had started for home from her school in the Bankuffar area at around 4.30 pm. As she crossed the Halaila forests, which is five km away on a hill, she was accosted by the suspect who raped and killed her.

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