Lucknow: A week after the bodies of two minor girls who were allegedly gangraped were found hanging from a tree in Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur, the father of one of them has also been found dead.
The 45-year-old man was found hanging from a babul tree in a field in Khair ka Dera village in Hamirpur district Wednesday evening, police said Thursday.
While three people — labour contractor Ramroop, his son Rajjo and nephew Sanjay — had been arrested following the girls’ deaths, Ramroop’s wife Nirmala and his daughter Sudha have been taken into custody for allegedly pressuring the man to withdraw his criminal complaint, police told ThePrint Friday.
In their complaint, the victims’ families had alleged that two of the suspects — Rajjo and Sanjay — had gangraped them.
The girl’s older brother said that his father argued with Ramroop’s wife the day before he killed himself. “Ramroop’s wife had a fight with my father on Tuesday and she threatened him that she would lodge an FIR against my father if he did not withdraw the complaint against her husband, son, and nephew,” he said, adding that he left home the next morning and was later found dead.
The alleged gangrape of the two girls, who were cousins aged 16 and 14 years, has led to a political maelstrom in Uttar Pradesh, with the Opposition trying to corner the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Soon after news of the father’s death broke out, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra compared the incident to the Unnao and Hathras gangrape cases.
However, unlike those cases, no caste angle has yet been revealed in the current one.
“Being a woman has become a crime in this jungle raj (Uttar Pradesh), where there is no such thing as the law left. What should crores of women of the state do, where should they go?” she said in her long post in Hindi.
कानपुर में गैंगरेप से पीड़ित दो नाबालिग बच्चियों ने आत्महत्या कर ली। अब उन बच्चियों के पिता ने भी आत्महत्या कर ली है। आरोप है कि पीड़ित परिवार पर समझौता करने का दबाव बनाया जा रहा था।
उत्तर प्रदेश में पीड़ित बच्चियां-महिलाएं अगर न्याय मांगती हैं तो उनके परिवारों को बर्बाद कर…
— Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (@priyankagandhi) March 7, 2024
Kanpur police awaits FSL report
ThePrint had reported that the two girls were hanging from a tree in Barauli on 28 February. According to the police, the girls and the suspects both came from Khair ka Dera village, and the former’s family worked at a brick kiln that Ramroop owned in the village.
In his complaint, the 16-year-old’s father claimed that the two suspects had previously sexually harassed the girls and even had “objectionable” photos of the older one.
After the family confronted them, Rajjo and his cousin Sanjay entered the girls’ house in their father’s absence, gangraped them, and threatened them into silence, the complaint said.
The Kanpur Police meanwhile told ThePrint that they were still awaiting results of a forensic test that could confirm the gangrape. They are also investigating if Rajjo had deleted the videos of the girl from his phone.
“The girls’ family had alleged that the accused Rajjo had objectionable videos and photos of the 16-year-old. We had checked his phone but since no videos were found, the phone has been sent for examination by the forensic laboratory in Lucknow,”, Kanpur’s Additional Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Harish Chander told ThePrint.
Ghatampur Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Ranjeet Singh said there were many angles that the police were currently probing.
“In the autopsy report for the girls, doctors say that the symptoms suggest a case of hanging but had also preserved the viscera (for further testing). That report will come from the forensic science laboratory in Jhansi while the report for the examination of the mobile has to come from FSL Lucknow,” he said, adding that these laboratories have been told to take the case on priority.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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