Three men barged into a 16-year-old girl’s home in Firozabad in Uttar Pradesh and shot her dead for objecting to sexual harassment on Friday, PTI reported on Saturday, citing the police.
The girl, a Class 12 student, had objected to sexual harassment by the men when she was returning home from from her institute on Friday afternoon, Senior Superintendent of Police Sachindra Patel said. The youths entered her house on Friday night when she was sleeping and began to beat her. When her father and other family members intervened, the men shot the girl and fled, the police said.
The three men have been identified as Manish Yadav, Sopali Yadav and Gaurav Chak. The police have registered a case against them. Two of the accused have been taken into custody for questioning, Patel said. He added that the case was being investigated from all angles. The body of the teenager has been sent for an autopsy.
“Some people came to my house today and started fighting,” the girl’s father said, according to News18. “They shot my daughter in the head. Manish Yadav, Shivpal Yadav and Gaurav Chak killed my daughter. My daughter was a Class 12 student. These people used abusive words for her when she was coming home from school. My daughter responded and opposed the harassment.”
Uttar Pradesh has recently been in the news for the gangrape and subsequent death of a 19-year-old Dalit woman in Hathras district last month. The case had caused much political outrage, especially after the police hurriedly cremated the woman’s body in the middle of the night while keeping her family confined to their home.
Congress leaders Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi visited Hathras and met the woman’s family, after being deported back to Delhi from Noida the first time around. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath, who took criticism from opposition leaders for his handling of the case, claimed that there was an international conspiracy behind the politics over it. However, on October 10, the Central Bureau of Investigation took over the case at the recommendation of the Uttar Pradesh government.
The Uttar Pradesh administration has consistently denied that the woman was raped, saying that Forensic Science Laboratory report did not find semen in the victim’s body. However, the chief medical officer at Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College – where the woman was admitted – said the forensic lab’s report “holds no value” as it relied on samples taken 11 days after the crime was committed. He was later suspended from duty.
The state police have also filed 19 first information reports in Hathras against unidentified persons for allegedly attempting to incite caste-based conflict.
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