Two policemen were suspended for laxity on Wednesday following the alleged gangrape and suicide of a 15-year-old Dalit girl in Uttar Pradesh’s Chitrakoot district, a senior police official said.
Chitrakoot Superintendent of Police (SP) Ankit Mittal said prima facie, it seemed that there was laxity in discharge of duty by Karvi police station SHO Jaishankar Singh and Sub-Inspector Anil Sahu.
The Chitrakoot SP also said that the son of a former village pradhan and his two aides were arrested on Tuesday in connection with the case adding that on Tuesday night, IG Chitrakoot range K Satyanarayan and District Magistrate Sheshmani Pandey met the family of the victim and assured them of justice. Mittal also said that heavy police force has been deployed in the village. "The aggrieved family conducted the last rites of the victim on Wednesday," the SP added.
The Dalit teenager committed suicide on Tuesday by hanging herself in her house in a village in UP’s Chitrakoot district. The victim’s family members have alleged that she was raped by three men in a forest area on October 8, Mittal said. On the basis of a complaint from the victim's family members, former village head's son Kishan Upadhyay and two others -- Ashish and Satish -- were arrested under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, the SP added.
The Victim’s family members have also alleged that the girl committed suicide as her complaint was not registered, a charge denied by the police who have said that the victim's kin had not filed any application to lodge an FIR. The victim's father has alleged that after raping his daughter, the accused left her with her hands and legs tied and the police brought her back but did not register an FIR.
The SP on Tuesday said the post-mortem examination did not confirm rape and the samples would now be sent to a Forensic Sciences Laboratory (FSL).
The incident comes just days after a 19-year-old Dalit woman from UP’s Hathras district succumbed to her injuries after allegedly being gangraped by four upper-caste men in her village.
