TW: Rape
A 13-year-old Dalit girl was raped and strangled to death on 14th August, 2020, in the Lakhimpur Kheri district of Uttar Pradesh (UP). In the afternoon of 14th August, the girl went to defecate in a nearby farmland in the Pakaria village of Isanagar area, located at a distance of 130 km from Lucknow. The police have arrested the two accused of the case.
The girl had gone missing after she went to relieve herself. Her family started searching for her when she didn’t get back home. They finally found her body in a sugarcane field. It was confirmed later in her postmortem report that she was raped and died of strangulation.
The girl’s father stated that her eyes were gouged out, tongue was cut. The UP police, however, affirmed that her postmortem report didn’t show her eyes gouged out or tongue cut. Satyendra Kumar, Superintendent, Kheri district, stated, “Her eyes were not gouged out and tongue was not cut. The claim is not true. There is nothing in the postmortem report to suggest this. There were scratches near the eyes, likely due to the sharp sugarcane leaves, where the body was found.”
The police have filed charges against the two accused of rape, murder and also under the National Security Act. The farmland where the girl went for defecation belonged to one of the accused. He had reportedly warned the girl’s family in the past against defecating in his farmland.
Opposition parties including the SP and BSP have started questioning the Adityanath government over the increasing number of crimes in the recent days. The UP government is on the radar of the opposition parties since the incidents of rape and kidnapping have risen in the State.