CBI director Ranjit Sinha confident of cracking Badaun case

NEW DELHI: CBI director Ranjit Sinha has told ET that the agency is confident of cracking the case of minor girls killed in Badaun whose bodies lie submerged in rising waters of the Ganga. Even as hopes of exhuming the bodies have receded, Sinha said the agency has other evidence to solve the case.

It has now emerged that gross red tape on part of the Delhi government and a medical board of government doctors resulted in the delay in exhumation of the bodies, even as CBI shot off three letters over the past month asking for the step to be taken urgently in the case of two teenagers who were allegedly gangraped before being hanged.

ET has learnt that the CBI had written to the Delhi Special Secretary (Health) on June 21, asking for the constitution of a medical board of forensic medicine experts to decide on exhuming the bodies. The letter came after the CBI took over the case on June 12 and realised the autopsy had not been conducted properly.

The medical board constituted with three doctors — one each from AIIMS, Safdarjung Hospital and Maulana Azad Medical College — held its first meeting on June 26. The board did not decide on the exhumation at this meeting, though, and fixed another meeting on July 17.

CBI realised this spelt a long time gap due to reports of the rising water levels. So, by the end of June, the agency again wrote to the Delhi Government’s special secretary (health), saying the meeting should be preponed and if there was some issue with the availability of doctors, the medical board should be reconstituted as one or more doctors on the panel had proceeded on leave.

Why Delhi Doctors?

BADAUN IS just 3-hour drive from Delhi and CBI generally trusts govt doctors in Capital for advanced forensic probes as required in this case since bodies were being exhumed for 2nd autopsy. That is why CBI approached Delhi govt for constituting a medical board.