Vijaywada: After waiting for justice for more than 18 years, a couple from Andhra Pradesh were handed over a bag of bones by a Vijaywada court on Friday.
The bones are all that remain of their daughter who was raped and murdered in 2007. She was then 17. The crime has remained unsolved and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that was handed over the case, filed a closure report recently.
“After 18 long years of struggle, this is what we have got. Our hopes have died. Even the last flicker of belief that justice would be served has evaporated. We were forced to fight in court even to retrieve parts of our daughter’
s body,” the victim’s mother said outside the court, as reported by Hindustan Times.
The 62-year-old father and 60-year-old mother has stood quietly at the special CBI court when the remains were handed over.
The victim was a first-year BPharm student, and was found murdered in her hostel room in Vijayawada on December 27, 2007. The autopsy report later confirmed that she was raped.
In 2008, the police arrested a suspect who was sentenced to life in 2010. He was acquitted by the Andhra Pradesh High Court seven years later. In November 2018, the High Court handed over the case to the CBI. The agency exhumed the victim’s body a year later to conduct another post-mortem examination.
The CBI submitted a closure report in the case earlier this month, stating lack of evidence and that no grounds existed to proceed further. After examining the final report, the court issued an order, closing the case, leaving the family with the skeletal remains of their daughter which they later buried at the Chenchupet burial grounds.