Bulandshahr gang-rape accused plead innocence, seek narco test

Lucknow:  The four accused in the Bulandshahr gang-rape case on Wednesday pleaded not guilty in a Bulandshahr court and demanded a narco-analysis test to prove their innocence. Salim Chamar and his three accomplices -- who said they were falsely implicated by police in the case -- were presented in the court by the Central Bureau of Investigation at the end of their remand. Manju Sharma, the counsel for the accused, said they demanded that the court order a narco-analysis test on them. The counsel said the CBI did not present before the court the items the police claimed to have found from the crime scene. The police had claimed seizing jewellery and other valuables looted from the victims but these were not presented in the court on Wednesday. The court asked that these items be presented before it on Thursday, to which the CBI agreed. On August 19, the CBI took over the probe into the case following an Allahabad High Court order. The CBI registered a case under Sections 395 (punishment for dacoity), 397 (robbery), 376D (unlawful sexual contact), 342 (punishment for wrongful confinement) of the Indian Penal Code and 4 of POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act. A 34-year-old woman and her teenaged daughter were gang-raped in the fields in Dostpur village in Bulandshahr district on the intervening night of July 29 and 30 after their car carrying six members of the family from Noida was stopped by criminals on National Highway-91 in Bulandshahr.