Kashmir Monitor: New Delhi: Wednesday, August 22, 2018.
The Supreme
Court on Tuesday directed the Jammu and Kashmir government to file its response
on a plea alleging custodial torture of the Kathua case witness by August 27.
A bench
comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY
Chandrachud fixed the matter for further hearing in August 29.
The top court
was hearing a plea by Talib Hussain, a key witness in the Kathua gang
rape-and-murder case, alleging custodial torture by the state police in an
alleged rape case lodged against him by his sister-in-law.
The court had
earlier asked the lawyer, appearing for Hussain’s cousin Mumtaz Ahmed Khan, to
satisfy it on how a writ of habeas corpus (produce the body) was maintainable
in the present case where the accused was in lawful police custody following an
FIR being registered against him.
The counsel
had referred to a Supreme Court judgment and said irrespective of the nature of
detention, whether legal or illegal, such a petition could always be filed in
cases of custodial torture.
Hussain is a
key witness in the Kathua case, in which an eight-year-old girl from a minority
nomadic community was abducted in January and gang-raped before being killed
The petition
was opposed by the lawyer, appearing for Hussain’s sister-in-law who has filed
the FIR alleging rape, that there were as many as 10 FIRs against the accused
and no relief should be granted without hearing the victim.
The plea
seeks protection of Hussain in police custody and alleges that he had been
brutally beaten up in the alleged fake rape case.
Hussain is a
key witness in the Kathua case, in which an eight-year-old girl from a minority
nomadic community was abducted in January and gang-raped before being killed.
The state
police’s Crime Branch, which probed the case, filed the main charge sheet
against seven people and a separate charge sheet against a juvenile.
The charge
sheet has revealed chilling details about how the girl was allegedly kidnapped,
drugged and raped inside a place of worship before being killed.