The CBI, which is probing the Kotkhai rape-murder case and the custodial death of one of the suspects arrested by the state police SIT, has said in its chargesheet that the SIT arrested the suspects without “any direct or scientific evidence” and subjected them to “third-degree methods” to get confessions. This comes after the central agency arrested eight police officers, including IG Zahur Zaidi, who headed the state police SIT probing the rape-murder case. While one of the suspects died in custody, five suspects, who were arrested in July by the SIT, are on bail. The CBI, which will submit a status report in Himachal Pradesh High Court on December 20 in connection with the rape-murder case, has said in the chargesheet that the SIT wrongly implicated six persons and later hatched a criminal conspiracy to frame Rajinder Singh, alias Raju, for the death of Suraj Singh. Suraj Singh,a Nepal national, was killed by the accused (policemen) by subjecting him to severe beating, torture and use of third-degree methods, claims the CBI chargesheet. “Investigations revealed that in a press conference on 13.7.2017, IG Zahur Zaidi claimed that there was scientific evidence against arrested persons but no such evidence was available in the case file. So, the focus of the officers of the SIT was diverted towards extracting confessions from them at any cost. SIT officers were using third-degree methods by beating the arrested persons, thereby causing injuries in a bid to extract confessional statements,” the CBI chargesheet says.
