The Supreme Court has directed CBI to complete within six months its probe into the mysterious disappearance of 12-year-old schoolgirl Navrauna Chakravarty from Muzaffarpur in Bihar.
"On the court inquisition into the matter's completion, the CBI counsel sought time till December 31. However, the court directed to complete it by October 31, 2016," Abhishek Ranjan, one of the petitioners who approached Supreme Court with a contempt petition against CBI told PTI.
Navrauna disappeared on the intervening night of September 18-19, 2012.
The Supreme Court had directed transfer of the case to CBI on November 23, 2013 but the agency filed the case nearly one-and-a-half-year later on February 14, 2015.
In its probe, Bihar Police initially claimed that rivalry was behind the crime saying three criminals had entered the house, rendered the girl unconscious, folded her in a bedsheet and abducted her.
The police said the girl's father Atulya Chakravarty had his house spread over huge land and had other properties too. Local strongmen had eyes on them and they had kidnapped the girl to get the property, they claimed.
Later, police changed the theory claiming that the student of class VIII of St Xavier's School allegedly had an affair and had eloped with the boy.
All these theories were trashed by the family which took resort to social media and also wrote number of times to the Bihar Chief Minister, Prime Minister's Office, besides other platforms.
Under pressure from people who took out marches demanding
release of the girl, police had claimed to have set up a team consisting of two deputy SPs and eight policemen to search every nook and corner of the district.
On the petition of Abhishek Ranjan, a law student of Delhi University, the apex court had handed over the case to CBI.
After CBI took over case, it found a human skeleton in the gutter behind the house of the victim which it claimed to be of Navruna and submitted its forensic report to the special court in Muzaffarpur but did not file any charge sheet.
Ranjan again approached the Supreme Court with a contempt petition.
"They (CBI) have time and again claimed that the case is now one of murder and that the remains found are that of Navaruna but have never despite the repeated requests of the family handed over the remains found for completing the final rites," Ranjan alleged in his petition.
He had claimed that since the transfer of the matter, CBI has not filed any charge sheet making it clear that it has not yet completed the investigation despite the lapse of more than two years.
"Petitioners had requested the investigating agency to provide them with the DNA report of the human remains but they did not get any official response from them and were just told that the DNA of the remains that were found matched with the parent's DNA, without ever providing any documentary proof of the same," he had claimed.
The family claimed that the skeleton did not have any skull and even tapped recording of a purported conservation with a CBI investigation officer who claimed that the skull was destroyed during the forensic examination in Patna.
The absence of skull ruled out any chances of facial reconstruction to assert that the skeleton was of the girl.
The agency could not ascertain whether the skeleton was of the girl. It also has not filed any charge sheet or closure report in the matter.
