CBI arrests woodcutter for Kotkhai rape

The CBI has cracked the nine-month old rape and murder case of a teenaged girl in Kotkhai area of Shimla, arresting a 25-year old Himachal resident whose DNA sample matched with the genetic material found at the crime scene, officials said here on Wednesday.

The man, a woodcutter with a criminal past, has been sent to judicial custody till May 7.

The investigation, which went like a crime thriller, involved a team of 40 CBI officials. The probe, which was taken over by the agency on July 22, 2017, on the orders of the Himachal Pradesh High Court, was monitored by the top brass of the agency.

“The director (of) CBI has been monitoring the progress of the case from day one,” CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal said here.

After ruling out involvement of five suspects arrested by the state police using call records analysis, narco-analysis, polygraph tests and corroboration of their alibi, the CBI had started the probe afresh, they said.

Some teams started collecting a DNA trail of people, history sheeters and families living in the area to do profiling by CFSL experts who used advance tests such as percentage match and lineage match.

The agency had collected 250 such samples of people from a wide range of backgrounds. In one case, the agency found that some percentage of a sample matched with the DNA of blood samples found on a liquor bottle at the crime scene and clothes and the body of the victim.

During questioning, it surfaced that a relative of the person whose blood sample was taken had worked at a nearby locality at the time of the crime.

The agency reached the suspect’s house in Kangra where it found that he had a criminal past and had been on the run since September, 2016 after getting bail in an attempted murder case, they said.

After DNA profiling of the parents, the CFSL team concluded that samples found at the crime scene were of their son.

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