In a major development that would help smooth the ruffled feathers of the agitating Maratha community members, the Ahmednagar police on Friday filed a charge-sheet against three persons in the much-discussed case involving the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Maratha girl at Kopardi village on July 13 this year.
Eight six days after the minor Maratha girl was gang-raped and murdered by three persons at Kopardi village, the Ahmednagar filed a 300-page charge-sheet against Jitendra alias Pappu Babulal Shinde, Santosh Gorkha Bhaval and Nitin Gopinath Bailume under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POSCO) for rape and murder. The police named 70 persons as witnesses in the case.
Soon after the charge-sheet was filed, the court transferred the case to Additional District and sessions court of Ahmednagar and committed it to a fast-track trial.
On its part, the Maharashtra Government has appointed Ujwal Nikam as the special prosecutor for the case.
The victim girl, who belongs to the Maratha community, was brutally raped on July 13 allegedly by three men who inflicted injuries all over her body and broke her limbs before throttling her at Kopardi village in Ahmednagar district.
Talking to “The Pioneer” after the Ahmednagar police filed a charge-sheet in the Kopardi rape and murder case, Nikam said: “I have not gone through the charge-sheet filed by the local police in the court. let me pursue the papers first. It is not the question whether there are eyewitnesses in the case are or not. It is the quality of circumstantial evidence that the investigating officer has gathered in the case. I have not set a time-frame for myself, but I will complete as quickly as possible”.
Nikam’s remarks should be seen in the light of the fact that there are no eyewitnesses in the case. Nikam is, however, confident of nailing the accused in the case , through circumstantial evidence.
What has, meanwhile, come as a relief to the Maharashtra government is that the police managed to file a charge-sheet in the case within the stipulated 90 days after the gruesome crime, which had triggered unrest among the Maratha community members – who have for the past two months been taking “silent” rallies across the state, demanding among other things stern action against the culprits in the Kopardi rape and murder case and scrapping of the “misused” SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
Nationalist Congress Party MP Supriya Sule had earlier this week warned the Maharashtra government that her party would take to streets if the police failed to file a charge-sheet in the Kopardi rape and murder case within the stipulated 90 days. She had come heavily on chief minister Devendra Fadavis for his failure to keep his promise made to the members of the victim girl that the police would file a charge-sheet within one month of the incident.
If the Kopardi incident has become a focal point of the ongoing Maratha agitation, it is because of the events that led to the parents of the victim girl formally filing a charge-sheet in the case. Soon after the incident, the main accused in the Kopardi case had threatened the parents of the victim girl that he would filed a case under the most “misused” SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
The threat handed by the accused promoted the Maratha community members to organise “silent” rallies across Maharashtra. The Marartha agitators, who have so far taken out huge “silent” morchas in more than 20 districts in the state, have among other things demanding death penalty for the culprits behind the gangrape and murder of a 14-year-old Maratha girl at Kopardi, scrapping of the “misused” SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities Act) and reservations for Marathas in education and government jobs.
Such has been the intensity of pressure mounted by the agitating Marathas on the Devendra Fadnavis government that the ruling BJP on Thursday formally adopted a resolution favouring 16 per cent reservations for Marathas in education and government jobs.
This, in effect, means that the Maharashtra government will submit written arguments favouring 16 per cent reservations for Marathas, when it files its say on October 13 in the Bombay High Court which is hearing a bunch of petitions challenging reservations extended to Maratha and Muslim communities that it had admitted in July 2014.
It may be recalled that the previous Congress-led DF government promulgated an ordinance ahead of the October 2014 State Assembly polls extending 16 per cent reservations to Marathas and five per cent to Muslims. However, on November 14, 2014, the Bombay High Court stayed the ordinance, saying that they were not in conformity with the law laid down by the Supreme Court in three cases.