The CBI on Friday filed a chargesheet accusing four men of gang-raping and murdering a Dalit teen in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras district, officials said.

After nearly two months of probe, the agency concluded in its final report that the accused — Sandeep, Ravi, Luv Kush and Ramu — had allegedly gang-raped and murdered the 19-year-old when she had gone to the field to collect fodder on September 14 in her village, the officials said.

In its findings submitted before the competent court in Hathras, the agency has slapped Indian Penal Code sections pertaining to rape, murder and gang rape, apart from those under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, against the four accused men, they said.

The charges attract a maximum sentence of capital punishment.

The agency has based its findings on the dying statement of the woman in which she is understood to have named the accused, besides scientific and forensic evidence collected by the CBI and statements of witnesses and the victim’s family members recorded by it.

The findings submitted by the CBI have left red-faced top officials of Uttar Pradesh police who had claimed that no evidence of rape had been found in the forensic tests.

Uttar Pradesh additional director-general (law and order) Prashant Kumar had said: “The report of the FSL has come. It says clearly that samples did not contain semen. It makes clear that there was no rape or gang rape.”

The ADG had also claimed that the woman in her statement to the police “did not mention rape but talked about ‘maar-peet (beating)’ only”.

The Uttar Pradesh government had handed over the case to the CBI after the incident triggered massive public outrage and a political slugfest.

Allahabad High Court had taken suo motu cognisance of the victim’s late-night cremation by the state police, allegedly against the consent of her family, and made some terse remarks on senior officials, warning them against character assassination of the victim and urging restraint by the officials, political parties and the media.

The CBI took over the investigation on October 11 and formed a special team under the Ghaziabad unit to probe the case.