Five months after a Catholic nun was allegedly gangraped in Kandhamal, the Orissa police filed a chargesheet on Thursday in the case on the eve of the expiry of stipulated time frame of 120 days.
The chargesheet was filed in the court of the sub-divisonal judicial magistrate at Baliguda which is hearing the case, Crime Branch investigating officer Dilip Kumar Mohanty said.
According to the Criminal Procedure Code provisions, the investigating agency is required to file chargesheet of the case within 120 days of the first arrest.
The Crime Branch, which probed the alleged rape of a 29-year-old nun on August 25 last year at Kandhamal district,
took over investigation on October 1.
The nun was allegedly raped and assaulted by a mob during the Orissa bandh at Nuagaon in Kandhamal district in the
aftermath of Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Laxmanananda Saraswati's killing on August 23.
Though a case was registered at Baliguda police station on August 26,
investigation actually started in October.
After the Crime Branch took over the investigation, it arrested a total of 10 persons, including three from Kerala.
All the 10 accused, including a father-son duo and two brothers, were behind bars for the last four months as the court could not take a decision on their bail application due to lack of a chargesheet.
The alleged victim had identified two accused at a jail in Cuttack on January 5. The Crime Branch had conducted
DNA tests on the accused and the nun.