Gudiya gangrape: Four accused get bail

Shimla, Oct 17: A special court here granted bail to four accused late on Monday, who are in judicial custody for the heinous crime of gangrape and murder of tenth standard student of Kotkahi. Police sources confirmed on Tuesday that four accused, who were presented before the Session Judge Shimla Verinder Singh late last evening, were given bail and likely to be released. The counsel for the accused, namely Subhash Singh Bisht (38), Rajinder Singh (32), Lokpal (19) and Deepak(23) put up the bail applications to release them last evening when they were produced before the court on completion of 30 days judicial remand. The court passed the order in favour of accused allowing them to release them on bail despite the CBI vehemently opposing their applications, urging the court to keep them in judicial custody till it could not come out with investigation. Arguing in support of bail, the counsel for the accused pleaded that they should not be denied bail as the CBI could not put up the challan which it had to file within 90 days' stipulated period in the court after the FIR against accused. The counsel for accused said they could not remain behind bars after completion of 90 days according to the rules. This was opposed by the CBI terming the crime heinous and brutal in nature, however, the court allowed the bail plea. Six people were arrested by the SIT constituted by the state police on July 15 and 16 however one of the accused Suraj died in the police custody on the intervening night of July 18 and 19 forcing the state government and state High Court to refer the case to CBI. The CBI after taking custody of these five accused, including Ashish Chuhan, Rajinder Singh (32) Subhash Singh Bisht (38) and Lokpal(19) and Deepak on July 25 conducted the narco and lie detector test of five at Ahmedabad. The CBI has to file the final status report about the real culprit on October 25 to reveal their names, however, the Bureau did not given clean chit to any of the accused so far. As it has been stated earlier that body of minor and class tenth student Gudiya was recovered from jungle on July 6 after two days of crime as she was kidnapped, raped and murdered by some miscreants. UNI