‘Case never taken up by Meghalaya High Court’
SHILLONG: In a new twist to the Williamnagar gang-rape case, a source from the High Court of Meghalaya has said that no such case was brought to the notice of the court as claimed by the Counsel of the accused who had challenged an earlier order passed by the Tura Fast Track Court (FTC).
The Tura FTC has now arranged for a hearing to be held on Friday, directing the defence party to produce the order issued by the High Court in this regard.
Informing this, a source from the Court said that the High Court never received any plea from the counsel of the accused challenging the order passed by the Tura FTC.
The FTC had, earlier, rejected the plea of some of the accused who claimed to be juveniles and had submitted fake birth certificates.
However, the FTC could not proceed further since it was informed that the counsel of the accused had approached the High Court challenging the order.
Interestingly, it has been found that no case with regard to the matter was taken up in the High Court.
“The cause of the delay in disposing of the case is not because of the High Court, since there was no such pending case of this nature in the court,” the source said.
In view with this, the FTC has scheduled the hearing on December 13.
It may be mentioned that it was on December 13 last year that the 16-year-old girl was gang-raped by 16 boys when she was returning home from the Simsang Festival.
The case was supposed to be disposed of two months ago but was delayed owing to various restraints like late submission of the forensic report and challenge put up by the defence party against the order passed by the Tura FTC.
It was in July this year that the counsel of the accused persons had first moved the High Court seeking its intervention into the matter stating that some of the accused are still juveniles. The High Court then directed the Tura FTC to ask the accused persons to produce certificates to prove that they are juveniles.
After examining the certificates submitted by the accused were found fake and were subsequently rejected by the Tura FTC.
The accused then supposedly approached the High Court again and asked the Tura FTC to adjourn the hearing, stating that the matter is still with the High Court.The last hearing which was cancelled was supposed to record the statement of the remaining witness, the Investigation Officer (IO), and there were hopes that the case would be completed this year.
Sources have, meanwhile, expressed concern that with holiday season setting in, there is very little chance of closing the case this year.