Pushkar Singh Dhami, Chief Minister of Uttarakhand assured on Tuesday that the 2012 Chhawla rape victim will get justice. CM Dhami said to the media “I have spoken to advocate Charu Khanna, who is handling the case and union law minister Kiren Rijiju regarding the Supreme Court’s decision of acquitting the three accused in 2012- Chhawla rape case. The victim is the daughter of our country and we will do everything to ensure that she gets justice.”
On Monday, the Supreme Court overturned the Delhi High Court’s decision and found three men innocent of the 2012 rape and murder of a 19-year-old woman in Delhi’s Chhawala neighbourhood. These men had received the death punishment from a lower court.
The conviction and sentence decisions made by the trial court and the High Court in this case were overturned by a bench of Chief Justice of India UU Lalit, S Ravindra Bhat, and Bela M Trivedi.
“…the judgments and orders of conviction and sentence passed by the trial court and the High Court are set aside. The Appellants-accused are acquitted from the charges leveled against them by giving them a benefit of doubt, and they are directed to be set free forthwith if not required in any other case. The appeals deserve to be allowed accordingly,” the court had said.
The court did, however, order that the victim’s parents would be entitled to whatever compensation that may be allowed by law, assuming it has not already been awarded by the Delhi State Legal Services Authority.
In a petition to the Supreme Court, three men argued against the death penalty for the rape and murder of a 19-year-old girl in Delhi’s Chhawala.
The three defendants received the death penalty after being found responsible for the 2012 rape and murder of a 19-year-old woman. The victim’s dismembered body was discovered in a field with many wounds from being attacked with tools for cars and earthen pots, among other stuff.
In February 2014, a Delhi court found them guilty. The Delhi High Court confirmed the death penalty on August 26 2014, saying they were “predators” moving on the streets and “were looking for prey”.
In relation to several allegations involving kidnapping, rape, and murder, three individuals named Ravi Kumar, Rahul, and Vinod were found guilty.
The Delhi High Court ruling had been contested by the three convicts before the Supreme Court.
The investigation began in February 2012, when the body of a 19-year-old woman was discovered in Haryana. After being raped, the girl was brutally murdered.
At the Chhawala (Najafgarh) police station in outside Delhi, a case was opened in relation to this.
The woman was first abducted, then she was sexually assaulted, killed, and her body was thrown in a field in Rodhai village in Haryana’s Rewari district, according to the prosecution.
“The woman was kidnapped by the three men in a car from near her house in the Qutub Vihar area on the night of February 9, 2012, while she was returning from office,” the prosecution had said.