Lawyer, alone, fights case & colleagues

JAMMU: On the desk in a small room of her house in Jammu, there is a framed photograph of a chubby, smiling girl. “That is my daughter,”

Deepika Singh Rajawat

said. “She is five years old and her name is

Ashtami

. I am fighting this case also for her.”

Rajawat, an advocate in Jammu, took up the case of the eight-year-old Bakarwal girl who was murdered after being raped early this year in January. Within days of her decision, even as many from the Bar took to the streets — some brandishing sticks — and shouted slogans against the state government, asking that the case be transferred from the J&K police’s crime branch to the CBI, she began getting threats to stay away.

Not one to be cowed into silence, she went on Facebook a day after the incident on April 5 and wrote: “The president of the

Jammu High Court Bar Association

mistreated me. He used unparliamentary language and threatened me not to appear in cases during a strike by the lawyers.”

Showing TOI the copy of a letter she received from the Jammu & Kashmir HC on Saturday that asks the in-charge of the security wing of the court to provide her protection during her appearances, she said, “But when I confronted the senior advocate and told him that I can fight any case I want, I was told there are ways to stop me. But this letter from the high court gives me strength even though there is a corner in my heart that is a little afraid. These are powerful people.”

Rajawat had earlier also filed a complaint on the issue with the Chief Justice of J&K HC and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. She said she was not safe and she had no idea how long the protests by the lawyers’ body would go on.

The case, in the Kootah court right now as Rasana comes under its jurisdiction, saw a dramatic turn when recently lawyers tried to stop the chargesheet, which narrates in detail the enormity of the crime against the Bakarwal girl, from being forwarded.

Asked if she is confident she will win as the Crime Branch which is probing the rape-murder right now has lost precious forensic evidence (the girl’s body was allegedly bathed and her clothes washed soon after she was found), she said, “It’s really messed up. The first few days after the crime was detected, some dreadful things happened. The local police station did not file an FIR. That happened only after 2-3 days. On January 17, her body was found. Then the ‘clean-up’ began. It was being hushed up. The policeman who did this is one of the eight accused right now.”

Rajawat, who said seriousness in the “pursuit for justice” came only after the high court intervened in February, asked why she should go with the others seeking a CBI probe. “Does the CBI have a spotless record? I can rattle off cases that have been botched up. I am happy with what the crime branch is doing. Though there have been setbacks, what with evidence being tampered with, we have covered some ground. There are repairs being made. Just that the case now has to be transferred to some other part of the state. That is our only hope.”

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