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Gudia case: Suraj’s demand for extra chapati cost him his life

The gruesome gangrape and murder case of 16-year-old girl in Kotkhai area of Shimla district and alleged cover-up by cops,…

Gudia case: Suraj’s demand for extra chapati cost him his life

Gudia case. (Photo: SNS/File)

The gruesome gangrape and murder case of 16-year-old girl in Kotkhai area of Shimla district and alleged cover-up by cops, nine of whom have been arrested by the CBI, had left everyone shocked in Himachal Pradesh. But there are more revelations that might shake everyone to the core.

The CBI chargesheet brings to light that Suraj, one of the accused arrested in Gudia case, was given severe thrashing for asking for one more chapati in dinner. The thrashing had caused severe trauma and resulted in Suraj’s death, although it was also established that all five accused, namely Rajinder Singh alias Raju, Suraj, Subhash Singh Bisht, Lokjan alias Chhotu and Deepak were tortured to get their   confessional statement.

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As per CBI chargesheet, a copy of which is with The Statesman, the facts were revealed during the narco-test of Raju. The narco test of Raju and other accused, Subhash, Lokjan and Deepak has also revealed that they were not involved in Gudia case.

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The SIT, which was constituted to probe the case, had on 10 July made attempts to extract confession from Raju, Suraj and Subhash but were stopped by a local in whose presence they were being questioned.

The SIT chief, Zaidi along with Director General of Police, SomeshGoyal had announced breakthrough in the case at 4.30 pm on 13 July while the five accused were arrested at around 10.30 pm.

The SIT members including DSP Theog, Manoj Joshi, SHO Rajinder Singh and ASP BhajanNegi had made video recordings of the confessional statements of Subhash and Lokjan. But they never put these on record with evidence pertaining to the case.

The CBI officials had recovered working copies of these from the mobile phones of the cops and also from the computer of Zaidi.

The video recordings have revealed that both the accused were under duress at the time of purported confession and in one such video, it was observed that Lokjan was not even able to walk properly.

After Suraj’s death, the cops had allegedly tried to hush-up the case and had tried to put blame on Raju but the postmortem report had indicated otherwise.

The postmortem report had concluded that Suraj had died due to blunt injuries, and not because of scuffle.

In addition, there were beating marks all over his body.Dinesh, one of the Constables posted at Kotkhai Police Station on the intervening night of 18-19 July, had refused to toe senior officials line in the custodial death and he  did not even sign the statement, prepared by police officials.

He had allegedly recorded the conversation between him and the then SHO KotkhaiRajinder Singh in which he was pressurizing Dinesh to sign the statement as was being directed by Joshi and Zaidi.

The CBI chargesheet states that Dinesh had also narrated the entire sequence to Zaidi but the latter didn’t take action against the erring cops and instead submitted false report to DGP that Raju had killed Suraj.

Zaidi and Joshi had allegedly tried to pressurize authorities to hand over Suraj’s body to his family members for cremation to destroy evidence, though CBI had asked the police to preserve the body for second postmortem.

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