MANGALURU: State government has appointed Chetan Singh Rathore, IGP, CID, Bengaluru as the new chief of the Special Investigation Team(SIT) formed for reinvestigation into sensational Sowjanya rape and murder case.
The decision comes after previous chief IGP N Shashi Kumar wrote to the government to relieve him from the post. State government issued the order appointing Chetan Singh as new SIT chief on Friday, October 30.
There were allegations from a section of people with questions on integrity on the ongoing investigation claiming that Shashi Kumar was close to the Dharmasthala temple administration and they had also made corruption allegations against him at the time of him serving as commissioner of Mangaluru City.
In addition, State government has also replaced additional superintendent of police Venkatesh Prasanna upon his request and has appointed Srinidhi, additional superintendent of police, Hassan as one of the SIT members.
The SIT also consists of CH Sudheer Kumar Reddy, DIG and Mangaluru city police commissioner, Nisha James, SP, Intelligence Bengaluru, Lokesh Jagalasar, SP, CID Bengaluru as members.
SIT has so far collected blood samples of Sowjanya's mother Kusumavathi for DNA analysis and police officers who were part of initial probe were summoned for questioning.
It may be recalled that Supreme Court issued an order 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.
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.
