Bhopal: A 17-year-old tribal girl in Madhya Pradesh’s Sidhi was brutally beaten to death last week because she rejected the sexual advances of an upper-caste man, the local police have said.
The accused Dharmendra Singh, 45, and his friend Dheeraj Singh, are in judicial custody and have been charged with murder and sections of POCSO and the SC and ST Act.
The crime took place on the intervening night of 24 and 25 August.
The police said Singh, who belongs to the Thakur caste, often pressured the girl for sex, but she repeatedly rebuffed him for a man of her own community.
Superintendent of Police, Sidhi, Ravindra Verma said on the day of the murder, the girl put up a post on social media wearing sindoor and a mangalsutra “for the man she liked”, and this angered Dharmendra.
That night, Dharmendra and Dheeraj barged into the house of the girl’s sister-in-law where she slept, he said. “Dharmendra dragged the girl to the adjoining room and beat her to death,” Verma told ThePrint.
According to the police, Dheeraj held down the girl’s sister-in-law and threatened to kill her and her children if she told anyone about the incident. After the girl had died, they left her body under a tree near the house.
The police caught Dharmendra and Dheeraj, who lived in the same Chirohi village, just before they were about to escape, Verma said.
The force, however, faced the wrath of the tribal community for apparently trying to play down the crime, and were initially reluctant to slap any other charges other than that of murder.
Tribal leader Vivek Kol said the police swung into action after questions were raised on why sections of rape, or POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act) or the SC and ST Act (Schdeuled Caste and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities) had not been put on the duo.
Kol told ThePrint: “The girl’s body was badly bruised… She had multiple fractures and was also a tribal. Despite this, the police did not add sections of POCSO and SC and ST acts.”
Ravindra Verma said charges were added only after more facts came to light. He said the initial postmortem had not conclusively established rape, and that the results of a detailed autopsy was awaited.
Kol also demanded that the homes of the accused be demolished. Incidentally, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has routinely bulldozed properties of the mafia, rape accuseds and rioters.
Verma said three teams, including one from cyber crime, were formed as soon as the murder came to light. Within 24 hours, the accused were arrested, produced in court and sent to jail, he added.
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