The body of a 16-year-old girl was found in a field in Uttar Pradesh’s Aligarh district on Sunday, said the police. The incident came almost two weeks after three girls, all related to each other, were found under similar circumstances in Unnao district on February 17. Two of them had died.
“The victim had gone out to get grass for fodder,” Aligarh Senior Superintendent of Police Muniraj said. “The family and villagers began looking for her when she didn’t return home even after a few hours. Later they found her body in a field and informed the police.”
The police said prima facie it appears that the girl was strangled, according to NDTV. The police have sent the girl’s body, found in the Akrabad area, for autopsy and formed five teams to investigate the case.
As the news about the body spread, villagers pelted stones at a police party trying to take the body for autopsy, reported PTI. Inspector Pranendra Kumar was injured in the attack, the police said.
Muniraj said the police were investigating the allegations that the girl was sexually assaulted. “Everything will be clear when the post-mortem report is received,” he said.
In the Unnao incident, the girls had also gone to get fodder for their cattle. Their family members found them lying in their field in an unconscious state after they did not return by evening. Doctors had declared the two girls dead on arrival at a nearby hospital. The third girl was admitted to a Kanpur hospital.
The surviving girl recovered later and on February 23 recorded her statement before the the police and the chief judicial magistrate. She said that said that the three of them were poisoned, but denied any sexual assault attempt.
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 said. “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.
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