"I demand justice, the culprits should be hanged," said the father of the two minor Dalit girls who were found hanging on a tree in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur Kheri on Wednesday, 14 September.
The bodies of the girls were found hanging about a kilometre away from their home.
Earlier, the mother of the victims had claimed that the bodies of the girls were not shown to her. "The postmortem was conducted without my permission," she added.
However, the police had said that the postmortem was conducted in the family's presence.
On Thursday, the Uttar Pradesh Police said that the two Dalit sisters died due to asphyxia, or suffocation. The police also said that the post-mortem confirmed that the minor girls had been raped and murdered.
What the Complaint Said
The victim's mother had filed a police complaint at Nighasan Kotwali police station late on Wednesday night, alleging that her daughters were raped and murdered.
She alleged that three motorcycle-borne unidentified youths, along with her neighbour Chhotu, stormed her hutment and kidnapped her daughters.
When she resisted, one of them kicked her and took the girls on a motorcycle towards the fields outside the village, the victims' mother added. The family later found the girls' bodies hanging from a tree in a field a few hundred metres from their village, she said.
The girls' mother was quoted as saying, “When I regained consciousness, my daughters were not there. I ran around the village, seeking help. We were able to find their bodies near a sugarcane field around 5pm. They were hanging from a tree, tied to their own dupattas. They had so many dreams,” The Indian Express reported.
She added that while the elder girl was a school dropout and used to stitch clothes to bring home money, her younger girl dreamed of running a “beauty parlour” or joining a “naukri.”
She further told ANI, "The police did not take any action on our complaint."
Further, the victims' mother said that the accused, who are residents of Lalpur, used to come to their house everyday.
Meanwhile, several politicians, including Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and former UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, condemned the incident and decried the law and order situation in the state.
Six Accused Nabbed
Meanwhile, the six accused have been taken into custody and are being interrogated by the police, Lakhimpur Kheri Superintendent of Police, Sanjiv Suman, had told reporters in a press conference on Wednesday, 15 September.
A First Information Report (FIR) has been registered against four of the accused under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections pertaining to murder and rape, and also under the stringent Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
According to the police, a man named Chotu, who lived near the girls' house, introduced them to three of his acquaintances – Junaid, Suhail, and Hafizul. The sisters were lured into the fields on the pretext of friendship and raped by Suhail and Junaid.
When the girls insisted on getting married, the trio strangulated and killed them. They then called two other acquaintances, Karimuddin and Arif, to eliminate the evidence by making it appear that the girls had hanged themselves, the police said.
(With inputs from Aaj Tak, PTI, and ANI.)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)