The autopsy has confirmed the girls were raped and strangled.
Two Dalit sisters, 17 and 15, were raped, murdered and hung from a tree in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur by five men, the police said today as a village seethed with rage. Their family didn't cremate the girls for hours, until they were promised justice.
Here are the 10 latest developments:
Six men allegedly involved in the double murder have been arrested. They are Suhail, Junaid, Hafizul Rehman, Karimuddin, Arif and Chhotu. Chhotu, a neighbour, was not involved in the crime but allegedly introduced the girls to these men.
Five were arrested yesterday, but Junaid, who tried to escape, was caught this morning after an encounter with the police in the fields. He was shot in the leg and was seen in a video limping as he was taken away by the police.
On Wednesday afternoon, the girls were lured to a sugarcane field and sexually assaulted by Suhail and Junaid, district police chief Sanjeev Suman told reporters. The others helped get rid of the evidence.
The sisters went willingly with Suhail and Junaid in their bikes, the police said, countering the family's charge that they were kidnapped by three men on bikes. The police said the girls were "friends" with Suhail and Junaid.
"The girls were raped in the fields. When they insisted that the men marry them, the men strangled them with their dupattas. Then they called Karimuddin and Arif for help with covering up the crime. They hung the bodies from the tree to make it look like suicide," the officer said.
Villagers, including the family of the teenagers protested near the village, demanding swift punishment for the accused. Scores of angry villagers blocked the police when they tried to take the bodies for a post-mortem. In a video, Sanjeev Suman was heard asking the protesters to stop blocking the road.
The officer denied the villagers' allegation of insensitivity. "There are 1,000 cameras at the spot. We are dealing with the case with utmost sensitivity. We dealt with it peacefully. The family has no issues with us," officer Sanjeev Suman said.
The family refused to cremate the girls until the government promised compensation and a fast-track trial.
The incident has brought back the horrifying memories of the 2014 incident in Badaun, when the bodies of two teen cousins were found hanging from a tree.
Several opposition leaders have attacked the Yogi Adityanath government over law and order in Uttar Pradesh. Samajwadi Party's Akhilesh Yadav called the incident as a repeat of the Hathras case from 2020 in which a Dalit girl was raped and murdered. Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and AAP MP Sanjay Singh also targeted the government.
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