CBI files closure report in Navruna murder case in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur

More than six years after it took up the case of kidnapping and murder of a 14-year-old girl Navruna, the Central Bureau of Investigation filed a closure report in the special CBI court in Muzaffarpur on Monday evening.

The CBI had taken over the case on February 24, 2014.

Navruna, a seventh standard student, had gone missing from her ancestral house at Chakravorty lane along Muzaffarpur’s Jawahar Lal Road under the town police station on the intervening night of September 17-18, 2012.

The land mafia was suspected to have carried out the abduction and murder. They were said to be eyeing a chunk of land, which Navruna’s father, Atulya Chakraborty, wanted to sell. Her disappearance was first investigated by the district police and Crime Investigation Department (CID). With no headway in the case, it was handed over to the CBI.

Ajay Kumar, a deputy superintendent of police in the CBI and chief investigator in the case, submitted the closure report on Monday more than a month before the Supreme Court’s December 31 deadline to file a charge sheet and action taken report. It was the tenth extension that the CBI had sought from the Supreme Court.

Kumar refused to speak to media persons saying that he was not authorised to do so. But a source in the court said that it was a 40-page report.

“The agency has mentioned all details of 86 points of investigation. They chiefly mentioned that they failed to collect evidence against anybody including 10 people who were arrested earlier during the probe. They have also written down the names of 60 witnesses, out of which 7 had undergone brain mapping, polygraphy and narco test,” said the source.

He also said that the CBI conceded that it could not collect evidence despite announcing a bounty of Rs 10 lakh for information.

“Our endeavour of getting some clues in this regard after the announcement has gone in vain as no one turned up before us with any evidence. It has not worked,” the CBI said in the closure report, according to the source.

The agency also asserted that the pieces of a skeleton found in a drain near Chakravorty’s house was of Navruna.

“This is the first time that the CBI has acknowledged in writing that the teenager was killed after she was abducted,” he said.

Meanwhile the advocate of Chakravorty family, Ranjana Kumari said that she and her client were anticipating the CBI to file a closure report. But Navruna’s father also said that he still has faith in the apex court.

“Since some powerful bureaucrats, politicians and land sharks are involved in my daughter’s killing, I was anticipating this from the investigating agency,” said Chakravorty.