When the country was celebrating Sankranti on Sunday, 14 January, a minor girl allegedly set herself on fire after two brothers gangraped her in Hamirpur, Uttar Pradesh, ANI reported. The incident was brought to light the next day.
The two brothers, who lived in the victim’s neighbourhood, had allegedly sneaked into her house at around 12.30 pm on Sunday and raped the minor. She was alone at the time, Hindustan reported, adding that the victim’s father had mentioned that she was to get married later this year in April.
According to ANI, an FIR has been lodged against the two brothers after the victim’s parents filed a complaint.
“The victim's body has been sent for postmortem,” Lal Sahab Yadav, Senior Superintendent of Police, Hamirpur, told ANI.
The girl's father, an employee of a private company, was at work while her mother had gone to a relative's house to celebrate 'Makar Sankranti' when the incident occurred, Superintendent of Police (SP) Dinesh Kumar P said.
"Agonised by the trauma of the incident, the girl sprinkled kerosene on herself and set herself afire, after which she died," the SP said.
At that point her brother came back to the house, but before he could do anything, the two men allegedly beat him up and escaped. Soon after, a group of villagers saw the brother and the victim and rushed them to the hospital. However, doctors declared the minor brought dead, the report added.
One of the accused brothers was arrested, while the other one is absconding, the SP said.
This incident comes soon after news of three other grotesque gang-rapes in Haryana’s Kurukshetra, Faridabad and Panipat areas.
The two minors in the Kurukshetra and Panipat cases were brutally tortured and murdered, with authorities citing possible necrophilia in the latter case.
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