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Ranchi, Jan. 16: Jharkhand High Court today directed the state to produce the FIR, station diary and case diary of the alleged rape and murder of a minor girl in a Garhwa village, a day after it took cognisance of “police inaction”.
The authorities have been told to place the records before the court tomorrow.
The court was hearing a public interest litigation that it had filed yesterday due to alleged inaction of the police in registering an FIR after the recovery of the 11-year-old girl’s corpse on Monday.
Deputy home secretary Arvind Kumar, however, filed an affidavit before the court saying that the police had begun investigations in the case.
Kumar added in the affidavit that the matter was reported to Ranka police station, which also alerted the district headquarters in Garhwa. The police had information that Bandu village, where the victim was assaulted and murdered, is situated deep inside forests and in a Naxalite-hit area.
Kumar’s contention differs with senior advocate and amicus curiae P.C. Tripathy, who has been appointed by the court to conduct the case.
Tripathy said policemen had not reached the village but the people had brought the body of the victim to Ranka police station. The victim, a student of Class IV who had gone to watch a football match in the evening of January 13.
Her parents alerted their relatives and neighbours who searched for the girl in the night.
The villagers could not locate the girl in the dark but came across her slippers at a spot near the jungle next morning. On searching further, they discovered the corpse of the half-naked victim tied to the stump of a tree.
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