Srinagar
The Supreme Court of Pakistan administered Kashmir (PaK) Bar Association Friday awarded Honorary Membership to Advocate Jammu Kashmir High Court, Deepika Thussu Rajawat.
A letter, signed by advocate Mian Sultan Mahmood, secretary general AJK Supreme Court Bar Association, reads: “Deepika has been awarded honorary membership…in acknowledgement of her courageously agitating and representing the rape and brutal murder of an 8-year-old girl of Kathua despite threats and intimidations to her life from communal elements.”
Deepika, 38, is a Kashmiri Pandit whose family migrated to Jammu from their ancestral village Karihama in North Kashmir in 1986. She took up the case despite oppositions from the Jammu Bar Association.
Recently, Deepika said she fears she can be “raped or killed”.
“I don’t know how long I will be alive. I can be raped…My modesty can be outraged. I can be killed, I can be damaged. I was threatened yesterday that ‘we will not forgive you’. I am going to tell the Supreme Court tomorrow that I am in danger,” Rajawat said on Sunday.
On Monday, the Supreme Court directed the Jammu and Kashmir government to provide security to the family members of the eight-year-old girl, along with their lawyer and a friend assisting them in pursuing the case.
