Indian court finds 6 guilty in Muslim girl rape case

By Ahmad Adil

CHANDIGARH, India (AA) - A court in India on Monday convicted six out of seven accused involved in the rape and murder of an 8-year-old Muslim girl in Jammu and Kashmir last year in January.

"Six of the accused have been convicted. One of the accused has been acquitted," said one of the lawyers while briefing the media at Pathankot court in the northeastern province of Punjab.

The quantum of sentence is likely to be delivered later today, local media reported.

There were eight people accused in the case, including a minor.

A juvenile court will decide about the minor accused in the case.

The chilling details of the rape and murder case shook the region last year. The victim girl from a nomadic Muslim herder family in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua region was kidnapped last January and a week later, her mutilated body was found.

Police said the girl was sedated, starved and gang-raped inside a temple by a group of people which included police officers.

The incident triggered widespread protests first in Kashmir and then across India, after there were rallies in support of the accused who belonged to another community. Two ministers from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) defended the accused and were forced to resign after massive outrage.

As the case became increasingly politicized, it was shifted from Jammu and Kashmir to the court in Pathankot where an in-camera trial was held.

The convicts are identified as Sanji Ram, Deepak Khajuria, Surinder Kumar, Parvesh Kumar, Tilak Raj and Anand Dutta. Ram's son Vishal has been acquitted.

Following the ruling, former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah tweeted: “Amen to that. The guilty deserve the most severe punishment possible under law. And to those politicians who defended the accused, vilified the victim & threatened the legal system no words of condemnation are enough.”

* Zahid Rafiq in Srinagar contributed to this story.