The police in Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao district on Tuesday said that the 17-year-old girl, who was found in an unconscious state along with two others in a field last week, said that the three were poisoned, but denied any sexual assault attempt, The Indian Express reported.
The girl, who was the only one who survived the poisoning, on Tuesday recorded her statement before the police and the chief judicial magistrate. She had been admitted to a hospital in Kanpur.
The teenager told the police that the accused had offered her and her cousins some snacks, which they did not accept. “When they refused to eat, he [the accused] offered them water which the three drank,” Unnao Superintendent of Police Anand Kulkarni told the newspaper. “She told us that she fell unconscious soon after drinking water and does not remember anything after that. She has also named the second accused in her statement.”
The police said that the accused, 28-year-old Vinay, had confessed to mixing poison in the water. They claimed that he wanted to target the girl because she had rejected his advances. Kulkarni told The Indian Express that the girl denied that the accused sexually assaulted her or beat her up.
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The police officer added that the accused used Sulfosulfuron, an almost-odourless herbicide to poison the water. “This could be the reason why the girls did not realise they were drinking poison,” he told the newspaper. “Another reason why the girls drank water without realising that it was poisoned was because the water supply in the village is high on sulphur content.”
Kulkarni said that the police will soon file a chargesheet in the case, which will be tried in a fast-track court.
The incident in question took place in Unnao’s Babuhara village last Wednesday when the girls had gone to get fodder for their cattle. Their family members went out to look for them as they did not return till the evening, and found them unconscious in the field.
The girls were taken to a hospital, where doctors declared two of them dead on arrival. The police had arrested the accused on Friday. They were cremated amid heavy security.
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