Just a day before the high court takes up the hearing on the PIL, a district court in Shimla on Tuesday allowed the plea of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to undertake a lie-detector test of all five accused arrested on the charges of rape and murder of class X school girl at Halaila village at Kotkhai in Shimla district on July 4. The girl had gone missing on her way back from school on July 4 and her body was found dumped in the nearby forest on July 6, triggering massive public protests and demonstrations in Shimla and other places including Theog and Kotkhai. The CBI is slated to submit its status report to the high court's special bench on September 6. The application for taking CBI court's permission for conducting lie-detector tests on those arrested was moved by the investigative agency last month. Also Read: IGP Zaidi, DSP among eight sent to three day CBI remand A CBI spokesperson today confirmed that the court has allowed the agency to conduct polygraph tests on the accused due to their inconsistent statements. Meanwhile, after obtaining a fresh remand for eight policemen, including IGP Zahur Zaidi and DSP Manoj Joshi, the CBI took them back to Delhi for fresh interrogations. The police officers were arrested in connection with the custodial death of Suraj Singh, one of the suspects arrested by the police in the case on July 13. The police had claimed that Suraj was accused by a co-accused Raju, but during the investigations conducted by the CBI it was found that the police had cooked-up the story as he actually died due to police torture. The CBI had claimed that it was yet to recover articles from the police used for torturing Suraj. As per sources, the high court bench, headed by acting Chief Justice Sanjay Karol, will take up the case for hearing when the CBI will submit a status report on the investigations in two FIRs registered, one relating to the rape and murder of the minor and the other for the custodial death.
