The 24-year-woman had suffered grievous burn injuries after a boy threw acid on her in the downtown area of Srinagar city on 1 February. The attack left the face of the woman completely damaged. She is currently undergoing treatment in Chennai.
The Jammu & Kashmir police arrested three persons, including the main accused whose marriage proposal was apparently rejected by the woman. Two of the accused, who have been identified as Sajid Altaf Rather and Mohd Saleem Kumar, are presently lodged at Central Jail, Srinagar; the third accused, who is a juvenile, has been lodged at an observation home in Harwan, Srinagar.
The police filed a chargesheet running into 1,000 pages before the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Srinagar, and invoked IPC sections 326A (voluntarily causing grievous hurt by use of acid) and 120B (criminal conspiracy), which envisages a minimum of ten years or life imprisonment.
The chargesheet against the third accused, the juvenile, will be filed separately before the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) under the provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act.
The chargesheet, a copy of which is available with this reporter, revealed that Sajid Altaf Rather hatched a conspiracy with Muhammed Saleem Kumar, and the juvenile threw the acid on the woman. The three wanted to “teach a lesson” and “take revenge” from the victim as she had rejected the marriage proposal of Rather.
The chargesheet further reveals that the main accused, after sustained questioning, confessed to the commission of the crime and also disclosed the involvement of his two other associates.
It also reveals that Rather brought sulphuric acid from Kumar. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) that was formed after the attack, also recovered a bottle containing acid from a Baleno vehicle, on the instance of the accused.This was the bottle in which the accused brought sulphuric acid from Mohd Salem Kumar from the mechanical workshop,” reads the chargesheet.
The charge sheet was filed just three weeks after the incident to ensure swift punishment to the accused. It says that immediately after this incident, a police party from the Nowhatta police station reached the crime spot and found that it was “inadvertently” cleaned by a woman. However, the police were lucky to get the evidence from the scene of the crime.This points towards the facts already established through other oral and documentary evidence collected during the investigation, that the accused had been in frequent touch with the victim girl for a long time,” it said.
The call records of Rather further revealed that he had been frequently visiting the downtown area of Srinagar City, including Nowhatta, where the victim woman had been working, as well as Eidgah, where the woman resides.
