Pak-Administrated Bar Council Awards Deepika Rajawat Honorary Membership For Fighting Kathua Rape Victim's Case

Pakistan-administrated Azad Jammu and Kashmir Supreme Court Bar Association on Saturday awarded lawyer Deepika Thussu Rajawat honorary membership for "courageously" fighting the Kathua gangrape victim’s case.

The brutal rape and murder of the eight-year-old in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua on January 10 has sparked outrage.

A letter, signed by advocate Mian Sultan Mahmood, secretary general AJK Supreme Court Bar Association, reads: “Deepika has been awarded honoray membership…in acknowledgment of her courageously agitating and representing the rape and brutal murder of 8 year old girl of Kathua despite threats and intimidations to her life from communal elements.”

Deepika, 38, is a Kashmiri Pandit whose family migrated to Jammu from their ancestral village Karihama in North Kashmir in 1986. She took up the case despite oppositions from the Jammu Bar Association.

Recently, Deepika said she fears she can be "raped or killed".

"I don't know how long I will be alive. I can be raped...My modesty can be outraged. I can be killed, I can be damaged. I was threatened yesterday that 'we will not forgive you'. I am going to tell the Supreme Court tomorrow that I am in danger," Rajawat said on Sunday.

On Monday, the Supreme Court directed the Jammu and Kashmir government to provide security to the family members of the eight-year-old girl, along with their lawyer and a friend assisting them in pursuing the case.

The top court also took note of the victim's father's plea seeking transfer of the trial of the case from Kathua, preferably to Chandigarh, and sought the state government's response.

The minor girl was allegedly held in captivity in a small village temple in the Kathua district of Jammu region by the eight accused for a week, during which she was kept sedated and raped several times before being beaten to death.