The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Saturday filed chargesheet against eight members of Special Investigation Team (SIT) in the custodial death of one of the accused in Gudia gangrape and murder case.

The CBI has filed 600-page challan against SIT members, IG Zahur H Zaidi, DSP Theog Manoj Joshi, the then SHO Kotkhai Rajender Singh, ASI Deep Chand Sharma, Head Constables Surat Singh, Mohan Lal and Rafiq Ali and constable Ranjit Singh.

The investigating agency had charged the cops for voluntarily causing hurt with an intention to extract confession from Suraj, one of the accused in Gudia case.

In its investigation, the CBI officials have found many discrepancies and had concluded that Suraj had died due to police torture.

Suraj, a Nepalese national, was allegedly beaten by cops with belt, stick and baton on the intervening night of 18-19 July that resulted in his death, though the police had claimed he died after a scuffle with co-accused, Rajender Singh.

In the chargesheet, the CBI had claimed that there were 32 injury marks over Suraj’s body while the postmortem report of the HP Police has only mentioned 22 injury marks.

The cops have also been charged for destroying evidence in the case and providing wrong information to divert the case.

Apart from listing inconsistencies in the medical report of the SIT, the CBI has listed 50 persons including five accused, who were arrested by police, as witness in the case.

The CBI has booked the arrested cops under Sections 302, 120 B, 348, 323, 326, 218 and 201 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) in custodial death case.

Gudia, a tenth standard girl from Kotkhai, had gone missing while returning home from school on 4 July. Her body was found in the woods on 6 July with multiple injuries on her body. Her autopsy had confirmed that she was gangraped and later, strangulated to death.

Following public outrage over the incident, the government had constituted a SIT which had arrested six persons, Ashish Chauhan, Rajender Singh alias Raju, Deepak, Subhash Singh Bisht, Suraj (who later killed in police custody) and Lokjan for the ghastly crime on 12 and 13 July.

On 19 July, the Himachal Pradesh High Court had directed the CBI to probe the Gudia case, along with custodial death case.

On 29 August, eight members of Special Investigation Team (SIT) were arrested for custodial death.

The CBI had taken five accused in Gudia gangrape and murder case to Ahmedabad lab to conduct narco test but no incriminating evidence was found against four accused (Rajender Singh, Deepak, Subhash Singh Bisht, and Lokjan).

As per reports, the CBI had reportedly got hold of some voice recordings on the basis of which former Shimla SP, D W Negi was arrested.

There were allegations that the HP Police had tried to hush-up the Gudia case.

The investigating agency is now trying to track alleged money trail, as huge payout (around Rs 3-10 crore) is suspected to have been made to shield accused who, reportedly, belonged to influential families.