Farrukhabad, UP: Fifty-year-old Lajjawati is adamant that her son has been framed.
“He is very weak, he could not have done this. He is very timid and easily frightened,” she says about Deepak, one of the two men arrested on charges of abetment of suicide in connection with the deaths of two teenage girls in Bhagautipur, a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Farrukhabad. The village has been in shock since the Dalit girls’ bodies were found hanging from a tree in a mango orchard Tuesday.
Deepak, the second of her four sons, has been running a tailoring business from a rented shop in Bhagautipur, roughly three kilometres from their home in Bhainsar village, for the past two years. “We want the real culprit to be caught. This case should be solved, that’s why we are demanding a CBI investigation,” Lajjawati tells ThePrint.
Meanwhile, at the two-room house of Pawan, the second suspect in the case, about 500 metres from Deepak’s shop, the mood is similarly sombre. Pawan’s mother Bhoori Devi, and grandmother Shyam Kali, are very distressed. Devi explains that a few months after Deepak opened his shop, Pawan began learning tailoring there, hoping to shift to Delhi to “earn a lot of money”.
Devi says her son was a quiet sort and no one in the village ever had any complaints about him, that he hardly ever spoke to anyone. She too believes her son is innocent. “He would only go to his shop for work and come straight back home.”
Pawan’s house is across from the temple where the Janmashtami celebration took place on 26 August. At around 9 pm, Babli (17) and Shashi (15) left home to attend the event, but never returned. The next morning, their bodies were found at the mango orchard.
While the UP Police maintain they have cracked the case — both girls chose to end their lives after Pawan and Deepak decided to call off their relationships with them, they say —both Lajjawati and Bhoori Devi are demanding a CBI investigation, as are the families of Babli and Shashi.
Though the police have connected Pawan and Deepak to the suicides through a phone and SIM card recovered from the spot where the bodies were found, Lajjawati and Bhoori Devi say they had no knowledge of their sons being in relationships with the two girls.
Lajjawati says her son Deepak had poor health and a frail heart.
She further says that on the night of 26 August, Deepak stayed at Pawan’s house and had no phone contact with them that day. The next morning, he returned home at 7 am. Hours later, news of Babli and Shashi’s bodies being found spread through the village.
Upon hearing about the deaths, Deepak said he wouldn’t open his shop that day, says Lajjawati. However, when his family insisted that he had nothing to fear if he had done nothing wrong, he went to his shop. At around 2 pm, the police picked up Deepak for questioning. A local rickshaw driver told his family that the police had taken him away.
Also Read: Week after bodies of 2 UP girls found hanging from tree after ‘gangrape’, father of one found dead
‘Some injuries not mentioned in autopsy report’
Meanwhile, at Babli and Shashi’s homes, politicians are frequently dropping in to meet their families.
Babli’s father Ramvir, and Munna alias Mahendra, the father of Shashi, discussed the case with a BJP delegation led by Farrukhabad MP Mukesh Rajput. Ramvir requested the MP to ensure that if the police, who are on the “right track”, do not solve the case, it should be handed over to the CBI.
Rajput assured them that their demand will be considered, the families say.
The Farrukhabad MP told ThePrint that the BJP government “ensures justice for anyone who faces injustice”.
“They send criminals to jail, impose severe punishments, and even use bulldozers against them later,” he adds.
Asked whether he meant the suspects’ homes in this case would also be demolished, Rajput said: “Strict action will be taken against the criminals once they are proven guilty.”
Ramvir says he is satisfied with the police action but is not convinced by the post-mortem report. He rejects the hanging theory and believes the youths murdered his daughter.
“We don’t know, it’s not like we saw the girls committing suicide,” he adds.
Both fathers of the girls say there were injuries on the bodies that were not mentioned in the post-mortem report. However, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Deepak Kataria has denied this claim. “When we got the bodies, there were no signs of injury on them. The post-mortem revealed no injuries,” he told ThePrint.
The police inquiry revealed that Deepak and Pawan had called the girls and asked them to meet near Deepak’s shop. They were there for around two hours. “If they could call them to meet, they could have also come back to drop them off. Why did they leave the girls alone?” Ramvir asked.
Ramvir says he has known Deepak and Pawan for many years and Pawan is a distant nephew. Pawan often visited his home and was there a week before the incident. However, Ramvir says he never suspected that Pawan and Shashi were in a relationship. He claims that during the police investigation, he was told that Pawan gave Shashi a SIM card three months ago, and that the girls started talking to the two suspects on the phone around then.
Shashi and Babli used to go to Deepak’s shop to get clothes stitched, he adds. “We had no idea they (Deepak and Pawan) would do something like this.”
Ramvir also claims the two youths used to harass his daughter and Shashi.
‘Case is closed’
Farrukhabad Superintendent of Police (SP) Alok Priyadarshi told ThePrint Friday night that Deepak and Pawan used to pressure the girls to talk to them. He said the men had confessed, and statements of the families will soon be recorded, after which a chargesheet will be filed.
On Babli’s father expressing his doubts about the post-mortem report, the SP said there was no provision to conduct a second post-mortem. The bodies have anyway been cremated by the families.
“From our side, the matter is closed now,” he said.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)