Senior CBI officer visits Hathras, takes stock of progress in probe

New Delhi: A senior officer of the CBI on Tuesday visited Hathras to take stock of the progress made in the case of the alleged rape and murder of a 19-year-old Dalit woman on September 14, officials said.

Joint Director Sampat Meena, who had supervised the probe in the Unnao rape case involving the then BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar which led to his conviction, visited the Hathras camp office of the agency, they said.

She met the officers there and took note of the progress made in the case. She also visited the crime scene, they

said.

The CBI had registered the case on a reference from the Uttar Pradesh government and immediately dispatched a team from its Ghaziabad unit to probe the case, they said.

The team has set up a camp office in Hathras and visited the crime scene, met the family of the victim and interrogated four accused in Aligarh prison.

The CBI officials had also met doctors at the Jawaharlal Nehru hospital in Aligarh where the victim treated before being shifted to Delhi, they said. The victim had succumbed to injuries during her treatment at Safdarjung hospital in Delhi on September 29.

The district administration had allegedly forcibly cremated the body at the dead of the night, denying the family permission to carry it home for proper last rites.

The alleged insensitive attitude of the administration had invited some sharp remarks from the Allahabad High Court. The issue snowballed into a major embarrassment for the Yogi Adityanath government as several parties including the Congress, Aam Aadmi Party, Trinamool Congress, Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal staged protests.