BENGALURU, NEW DELHI: Fourteen-years after 17-year-old Sowjanya was raped and murdered at Dharmasthala, the Supreme Court on Wednesday indicated that it may allow a fresh investigation into the case. The SC, however, reserved its judgment and would call for compliance reports from time to time, and continue the protection already extended to witnesses.
“It’s a very sensitive matter,” the Bench observed while reserving orders.
The court was hearing a Special Leave Petition (Crl.) No. 5763 of 2026 filed by Kusumavati Gowda, the victim’s mother, against the Karnataka High Court’s order of August 30, 2024, refusing reinvestigation as futile. In a turnaround, the state of Karnataka – which had earlier opposed the plea – supported reinvestigation at the hearing, filing a detailed affidavit on July 20.
Santhosh Rao – the man who spent about six-years in custody before his 2023 acquittal – appeared to support the mother’s plea, submitting that he had been ‘maliciously prosecuted’ and urging the court to find the real culprits. That left the CBI alone in opposition, and Wednesday’s hearing went badly for the agency.
Acquitting Rao on June 16, 2023, the Special Court held that “absolutely there are no materials on record to connect the accused with the crime,” recorded that the local men named by the family and by witness after witness from the first day were never investigated, and directed action against the “erring officials.”
The High Court upheld the acquittal, wrote in the impugned order itself that “if Santhosh Rao was not the one who committed crime, there must be somebody else — this definitely demands reinvestigation,” and then declined to order one.
At Wednesday’s hearing, counsel for the mother took the Bench through that contradiction and through the trial record: the CBI’s charge-sheeting officer admitting he never visited the scene of the crime; the mother’s own statement never recorded by any of the three agencies in fourteen years; the wristwatch on Sowjanya’s body, stopped at 2:45, never sent for examination; and the investigating officer obtaining a fresh undergarment from the victim’s home after her own was never found.
The counsel also read the CBI’s own application of 2021 before the trial court, in which the agency itself had told the court, on the evidence of four witnesses, that the role of three named local men “cannot be ruled out” and that it was necessary to proceed against them.
When the agency resisted reinvestigation, the Bench asked it directly: “Who are you trying to protect?” — observing that the man the CBI indicted stood acquitted and was himself before the Court seeking the truth — and that instead of acknowledging that something may have gone wrong, the agency was resisting even an attempt to find out.
The Bench also remarked that the CBI’s officer had acted as a judge rather than an investigator — merely reinterpreting statements recorded earlier and filing a charge sheet without independent investigation — and asked whether the agency was contending that, even after twelve years, the CBI was incapable of finding any evidence.
The court had, by its order of April 29, 2026, directed protection for possible witnesses named by the petitioner — several of whom, the state’s compliance affidavits show, were traced and secured within weeks, though no agency had examined them in 14 years.
The counsel for the mother pressed for a court-monitored reinvestigation, urging that the matter be kept pending in the Supreme Court itself rather than remitted, since monitoring by the court “makes a huge difference.” The Bench’s response was “judgment reserved, compliance reports to be called for, witness protection to continue”.
