BENGALURU: The CBI court has acquitted Santhosh Rao, the main accused, in the infamous Sowjanya murder case for lack of evidence. Sowjanya (17) was a second PU student of SDM College, Ujire, Belthangady taluk, Dakshina Kannada district, when she was raped and murdered.
She went missing on October 9, 2012, while returning home from college. Her father Chandrappa Gowda had filed a missing complaint at Belthangady police station. Sowjanya’s body was found with “shocking and disturbing” injuries the next day in the bushes near Mannasanka, said sources privy to the case. “The perpetrator had violated her badly. The body was found with sand in her private parts. The accused had done so to either destroy evidence or for sadistic pleasure,” they said.
After initial investigation by local police, the case was handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which submitted a 15-page report to the government naming Rao, who was arrested on October 11 as the main accused. The CID gave a clean chit to four others accused in the case from Dharmasthala.
Said to be mentally unstable, Rao, a contract labourer from Bajagoli, Karkala, was subjected to psychiatric assessment at Nimhans.
CBI court had questioned shoddy investigation
The report was, however, kept confidential by CID as part of the investigation. Rao, according to the police, was spotted in the area four days before the crime.
Following public outcry and widespread protests in Dakshina Kannada, the then Siddaramaiah government transferred the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in November 2013.
The CBI had submitted a charge-sheet naming Rao as the main accused. Sowjanya’s father had criticised the charge-sheet and demanded further investigation. His petition was dismissed by the High Court. In April 2017, the CBI court granted bail to Rao.
The CBI court had on earlier occasion criticised the shoddy investigation. It had come down heavily on the central agency for its lapses in a heinous case of rape and murder. Besides the CBI, the DNA expert had claimed that the police had failed to collect critical evidence of semen and blood samples from the body of the victim.