– Sahar Khan
A special Central Bureau of Investigation court in Chandigarh on Monday sentenced life imprisonment to Himachal Pradesh inspector general of police (IGP) Zahoor Haider Zaidi and seven other police personnel for the custodial death of a suspect Suraj arrested in connection with the 2017 rape and murder case of a school girl at Kotkhai.
Besides Zaidi, other policemen to get sentences included the then DySP TM Joshi, ex-Kotkhai SHO Rajinder Singh, ASI Deep Chand, three head constables and a constable. The then superintendent of police DW Negi was however acquitted in the case by the court.
A Special Investigation Team (SIT) led by the IGP was formed to probe into the case. It was in July 2017, a minor girl aged 16 years went missing after she was returning from a school and a couple of days later her body was traced from a Kotkhai forest.
The police personnel have been held guilty under various sections of the IPC, including 302 (murder), 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 330 (voluntarily causing hurt to extract confession), 348 (wrongful confinement), 195 (giving wrong evidence), 201 (elimination of evidence).
