New Delhi: Five days after a 16-year-old Dalit girl was found dead near her home in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr district on 1 October, the police Wednesday apprehended three people, including a minor.
The three accused — Sunil, Pawan, and a 15-year-old boy — have been booked for murder.
According to sources, the main accused Sunil, a “jilted lover”, had allegedly assaulted the girl before she died.
All three accused did odd jobs for a living and are from the same village.
“The girl and Sunil were in a relationship, which she had ended in July. Sunil was angry and met her with his two associates to confront her. The three were already waiting for her at the crime spot,” a senior police officer told ThePrint.
“During investigation, it was found that accused Sunil had proposed to the girl when the three met her and asked for her mobile number. The three surrounded her; she rejected his proposal and slapped him. Sunil, in turn, slapped her six times, thrashed and pushed her. She suffered a head injury after she fell on a roadside brick. He also tried to strangle her, but she was already dead by then,” the officer said.
Police claimed the three accused then dumped her body on the roadside, in the mud, and went in different directions.
The girl was declared ‘brought dead’ at the hospital. The post mortem report revealed she succumbed to an internal head injury.
Accused known to girl’s family
The police claimed the three accused were aware of the timing of the girl’s coaching classes, and were waiting for her near the highway. The girl had left her home around 1 pm and took a kuccha (unpaved) road, which leads to the highway.
Since the day of the incident, the three accused, who are known to the girl’s family, have been visiting her parents to avoid any suspicion, Bulandshahr’s Senior Superintendent of Police Santosh Kumar Singh said.
The police also said Pawan is the person who was described by villagers as the man in ‘red T-shirt‘ fleeing the scene of the crime.
The police had questioned around a dozen men in the case, including a drug addict, who was earlier detained as the prime suspect. Six teams were formed to nab the accused.
(Edited by Neha Mahajan)
Also read: ‘Can’t a girl even go out to study?’ UP Dalit family cries after daughter, 16, is murdered