Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) police have rubbished the reports published by “leading” Hindi daily newspaper Dainik Jagran. The Hindi daily, on April 20 ran a news on Kathua gang-rape and brutal murder of a minor girl saying that she was not raped. The byline of the news piece names Awadhesh Chauhan. J&K police took to twitter saying, ”Constrained by the reportage, it is to place on record that on the strength of opinion furnished by medical experts, it has been confirmed that the victim was found subjected to sexual assault by the accused.”

Press release….Case FIR No 10/2018 dated 12.01.2018 Police Station Hiranagar Kathua. pic.twitter.com/ek2IsXDpsa

— J&K Police (@JmuKmrPolice) April 21, 2018

Dainik Jagran and its subsidiary newspapers published the news on April 20, which is being widely circulated all over the internet.The published report says that two postmortems were released instead of one and that in both of the reports, there has been no mention of the minor being raped. When Newslaundry asked for the postmortem report from Dainik Jagran’s digital editor, Kamlesh Raghuvanshi and the lawyer Aseem Sahni defending rape accused, both failed to provide it.

Newslaundry further reported that Inspector General Crime Branch Syed Afhad-ul-Mujtaba said the theory of “two post-mortems” was being floated by the defence lawyers to mislead the media. SSP Ramesh Kumar Jala also said there is no question of two post-mortem reports.

Yesterday, the news was pulled down from Dainik Jagran website for few hours as the online editor of the newspaper said they were still verifying the facts.

Medical report submitted by Delhi Forensic Science Laboratory

As per News18, Srinagar Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) could not present a conclusive judgement on the case since the clothes of the victims were washed. This case was then transferred to Delhi FSL.

Delhi FSL was able to confirm the presence of blood stains on the clothes of the victim. After this, the DNA profiling was done which confirmed the presence of victim’s blood on the vaginal smears.

DNA profiling also helped to establish that the blood on the wooden stick and the few hair strands obtained from the Devisthan were of the victim’s. Involvement of Sanji Ram was established since he is the sole caretaker of the temple.

Also, the hair strand obtained from the place from where the body of the victim was dumped was examined and it matched with the DNA profile of one of the accused Shubham Sangra.

As per the report of medical experts, the minor was found prima-facie raped before being killed.

Dainik Jagran editor says that news pulled down to check more details

When BoomLive spoke to Kamlesh Raghuvanshi, the editor of Jagran.com on why the story was pulled down from there website, Raghuvanshi said that they wanted to run more check on the details of this story and that it was taken down temporarily. He also said that the story can still be read in its print version. When probed about which part needs more checks, Raghuvanshi refused to answer.

The news published by Dainik Jagran seems to be a work of fiction as it fails to take into consideration the report issued by the Delhi FSL which said that the victim was prima-facie raped. Since the news report has such glaring loopholes, on the surface of which it seems an act to form public opinion. Dainik Jagran has a readership of 5.59 crores and it is very irresponsible on their part to publish a false report on such sensitive issue.