The five accused in the Kathua case will file a new petition in the Supreme Court in the next few days, urging it to hand over the inquiry in the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation, their lawyer Ankur Sharma said on Tuesday.

The top court had on Monday moved the trial in the case of the murder and alleged gangrape of an eight-year-old girl to Pathankot in Punjab, and rejected the demand for a CBI inquiry.

Sharma denied that the court’s decision to move the trial out of Jammu and Kashmir was a setback for his clients, PTI reported. “It was a loss for the state government as it wanted the case to remain in Jammu and Kashmir, preferably in Ramban district,” he said, adding that it was also a loss for the girl’s family as they wanted the case to be shifted to Chandigarh.

Sharma said that the court’s order about a daily hearing in the case would hopefully help complete the trial in a year.

The girl was found dead on January 17, a week after she went missing. The accused allegedly lured her to a secluded place on the pretext of helping her find her missing horses, and then took her to a temple. The Crime Branch’s chargesheet said she had been held captive at the temple, drugged, raped repeatedly and then strangled.