After over three months of Ranchi’s Nirbhaya case where a 19-year old Engineering Student was raped and murdered at her home in December last year, State’s Crime Investigation Department (CID), investigating the case, is still empty handed without having any clue in this regard. Though the State Government had referred the matter to the CBI in January itself, they are yet to take over the case.
“We are still investigating the case…it is at a very early stage,” said CID SP Sunil Bhaskar. Some responses from the people have been received after pamphlets were distributed in some of the areas like Silli, Ram Tahal Choudhary Institute of Technology and Booty areas, he added.
“We are trying to corroborate the information what we have from those responses, but it will be too early to say anything in this regard,” said the SP.
Incidentally, the CID, in order to gather information from unknown sources, had distributed pamphlets depicting the announcement of a reward of Rs 1 lakh made by the District Police to any person who provides any clue leading to the arrest of the people involved in it.
After failure of district police to reach any conclusion in their investigation even after 19 days of the incident and widespread protest from the Opposition and student organisations, the State Government on January 3 had recommended the case to the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) but the matter is yet to be taken over by it as they needed some more information in a prescribed format.
“We have already referred the matter to the CBI…but a few days back they wanted some more information in a prescribed format which has already been dispatched to them,” said Principal Secretary (Home) SKG Rahate. The process of handing over the case to CBI has been initiated and hopefully it will be done very soon, he added.
Remarkably, more than 50 suspected people were interrogated in the last three months from near her home in Booty, victim's native village in Silli and even from the place where her parents are staying at Barkakana, but all in vain.
To gather clues from victim’s Whatsapp account, Ranchi police had sent her phone and those belonging to three of her family members, including her sister, to the Central Forensic Science laboratory (CFSl) Kolkata, but it was returned by them saying it lacked technology to retrieve highly encrypted Whatsapp data. The phones were then sent to CFSl Hyderabad as they are supposed to have equipped with latest technology to decipher even the encrypted messages report for which was still awaited.
The semi-naked half-charred body of the 19-year-old victim, a third semester student of Ram Tahal Choudhary Institute of Technology, Ormanjhi was found in the morning inside her
house at Booty. She was alone in the house when the incident took place.
Originally from CMPDI Colony of Barkakana, the girl was living with her elder sister in Booti Basti on a rented accommodation.