Bengaluru, 30 October

The State government on Friday replaced the head and an officer of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the alleged rape and murder of 17-year-old Sowjanya on the outskirts of Dharmasthala in 2012. 

The government appointed IGP Chetan Singh Rathore to head the SIT that was constituted in September, replacing IGP N Shashikumar, according to a government release. Shashikumar had written to the State government seeking to be relieved of his responsibility as Special Investigation Team head, citing personal reasons, sources said. 

The government has also replaced Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) Venkatesh Prasanna, a member of the SIT, with ASP Srinidhi of Hassan district as well. Prasanna reportedly requested that he be kept out after Sowjanya’s family objected to his inclusion.

The Karnataka government constituted the SIT on 24 September to conduct a fresh investigation into the case following a direction from the Supreme Court.

The team also comprises Mangaluru City Police Commissioner CH Sudhir Kumar Reddy, Nisha James, Superintendent of Police, State Intelligence, Bengaluru, and Lokesh Jagalasar, Superintendent of Police, CID, Bengaluru.

The SIT, which functions under the supervision of the Director General and Inspector General of Police, Karnataka, is required to complete a comprehensive investigation within three months and submit its final report. 

The Sowjanya case remains one of the most controversial unsolved cases in Karnataka, amid allegations that high-profile figures are involved, witnesses dying under mysterious circumstances, and an allegedly botched investigation by the CBI, CID and local Belthangady police. A mentally unstable man, Santosh Rao, even spent years in jail before being honourably acquitted as there was no evidence implicating him. 

Sowjanya, a PUC student, had gone missing when returning home in 2012, and her body was found a day later near the Nethravathi River, with a postmortem report concluding that she had been sexually assaulted.