The Delhi High Court has ordered media houses who had revealed the identity of Kathua Case victim and to whom notices were issued to pay Rs 10 lakh each to the court. The Court will transfer the amount to J&K victims compensation fund.
The court had earlier chastised the media for revealing the victim's identity, and prohibited them from disclosing the identity of the eight-year-old girl, who was gangraped and killed in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua district, in future reports.
A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar, which took up the issue on its own after coming across print and electronic media reports, had sought a response from the media houses, asking why action should not be taken against them on the matter.
The girl from the nomadic Bakerwal Muslim community had disappeared from near her home in the forests next to Rasana village in Kathua, 90 km from Jammu on January 10.
A week later, her body was found in the same area.
The state police Crime Branch, which probed the case, filed a main chargesheet against seven accused persons and a separate chargesheet against a juvenile in a court in Kathua district earlier this week.
The chargesheet revealed chilling details about how the girl was allegedly kidnapped, drugged, raped inside a place of worship before being killed.
(Inputs from agencies)
