The bodies of two minor sisters were found hanging from a tree in a field about a kilometer from their home in Uttar Pradesh.
The horrific incident occurred in the Nighasan area of Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri district on Wednesday, 14 September. Seven accused have been taken into custody and are being interrogated by the police, Lakhimpur Kheri Superintendent of Police, Sanjiv Suman, told reporters in a press conference.
The victims’ mother informed the police that the perpetrators kidnapped them on a motorcycle, raped and killed them, and then hung their bodies from the tree. Police have corroborated these allegations.
An 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)
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. On the pretext of friendship, the sisters were enticed into the fields and raped by Sohail 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 destroy the evidence by making it appear that the girls had hanged themselves, police said.
The investigation is underway and a post-mortem is being conducted in the family’s presence, police said, amid allegations that the post-mortem was done without consent. Village residents held a protest on Wednesday night at Nighasan Cross against the killings and blocked all roads. Local police talked to the furious villagers in a bid to console them and asked them to lift the roadblock. Police personnel was deployed in large numbers to ensure law and order.
‘Heinous Repetition of the Hathras Incident’ Former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and Samajwadi Party chief, Akhilesh Yadav, condemned the incident on social media and alleged that, according to the girls’ father, the post-mortem was done without consent.
“After farmers in Lakhimpur, the killing of Dalits is now a heinous repetition of the ‘Hathras ki Beti’ incident,” he wrote.
Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra called the incident “heartbreaking” and accused the government of being asleep at the wheel. “Family says the girls were abducted in broad daylight. Law and order in the state don’t improve by giving false advertisements in newspapers and TV every day. After all, why are heinous crimes against women increasing in Uttar Pradesh? When will the government wake up?” she wrote.
On 14 September 2020, four upper caste men gang-raped a 19-year-old Dalit woman in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras district. She died two weeks later in Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital. Her family members had alleged that they were forced by the local police to hurriedly conduct her last rites. Local police officers, however, had said that the cremation was carried out “according to the wishes of the family.”
The video of the horrific rape and murder of the two girls, from the Dalit caste, is very disturbing, is this the life of a Dalit in India? Is it so easy to pick them up and rape them because they do not have strong enough backing to protect them?
#DoubleEngineDisaster#UttarPradesh: Shocking incident from #Lakhimpur, bodies of two #Dalit minor girls found hanging from tree. Family's allegation – "The dead body has been hanged after killing"#ShameOnBJPGovt pic.twitter.com/yhrqG9XOFa
— Anil Goud (@AnilgoudKTRs) September 15, 2022