MANGALURU: The Special Investigation Team(SIT) constituted to probe the sensational 2012 Sowjanya rape and murder case officially launched the investigation with SIT chief and other officials arriving in Mangaluru and conducting a meeting on Thursday.
Inspector General Of Police(IGP) N Shashi Kumar and chief of the SIT conducted a meeting at an office set up at the old DCs office building premises in Mangaluru, in which its members CH Sudheer Kumar Reddy, DIG and Mangaluru city police commissioner, Nisha James, SP, Intelligence Bengaluru, Lokesh Jagalasar, SP, CID Bengaluru and other officials were present. Venkatesh Prasanna, Additional SP Bengaluru Rural was not present during the meeting who has reportedly opted out of the investigation team.
The SIT officials discussed the course of action and further investigation strategy during the meeting.
To facilitate the investigation, a separate office has been set up for the SIT on the second floor of the old DC office building in Mangaluru and an office will be set up in Belthangady also where officials visited later in the day.
This comes amidst Supreme Court order issued on September 21, nearly 14 years after the crime, directing a fresh probe into the rape and murder of 17-year-old Sowjanya at Ujire in Belthangady taluk. The court had directed the state government to constitute the SIT and submit a compliance report within three months.
Sowjanya, a student of SDM College in Ujire, went missing while returning home from college on October 9, 2012. Her body was found the following day in a forested area near the Nethravathi River in Dharmasthala. The postmortem confirmed that she had been sexually assaulted before being murdered.
Earlier investigations by the Karnataka Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) failed to identify those responsible for the crime. The sole accused in the case, Santhosh Rao, was acquitted by a trial court in June 2023.