A 13-year-old Dalit girl was allegedly raped and killed in Haryana’s Gurugram city by a relative of the landlord of the house in which her family lived, PTI reported on Tuesday.
The girl and her family lived in Narela in north Delhi, but she was staying at the Gurugram house of the landlord’s relative when the alleged attack took place.
The police have arrested Praveen Verma, the landlord’s brother-in-law, on the basis of a complaint filed by the girl’s father, an unidentified official told the news agency.
The girl’s father alleged that on July 17, the landlord’s wife had said that her sister-in-law had given birth to a child in Gurugram. The landlord’s wife took the the girl to her brother’s home so that she could play with the new child, the girl’s father said in the complaint, according to PTI.
The father said that on August 23, the landlord told him that his daughter had died of food poisoning, The Indian Express reported.
That evening, the landlord’s family brought the girl’s body in an ambulance to her residence in Narela to cremate her. However, the girl’s neighbours noticed injury marks on the face and back of the body and asked the father to inform the police about the matter.
A post-mortem report revealed that the girl had died of “asphyxia [body deprived of oxygen] consequent upon antemortem [before death] manual smothering”. The report also stated that there was “positive evidence of vaginal and anal sexual assault” and that the injury marks were “recent in duration”.
Gurugram Police initially filed a first information report under sections of the Indian Penal Code relating to murder and criminal conspiracy, and the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. Later, the police added sections under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.
Following the incident, a delegation of the Delhi unit of Congress, headed by its president Anil Kumar, met the girl’s family. They demanded that the government should provide protection and financial assistance to them.
“It is a very inhuman incident and the government must act to punish the culprits and also ensure all steps are taken to prevent such heinous crimes,” Kumar told PTI.
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