Father scalds girl as punishment

A man allegedly put the head of his eight-year-old stepdaughter into boiling water during a fight with his wife. The girl suffered serious burns.

The incident happened at Madhoganj in Uttar Pradesh’s Hardoi district on Thursday, police said.

According to police, Shravan Kumar had a fight with his wife Sarojini Devi over some family matter.

He then asked his stepdaughter Kalawati to fetch a stick from outside the house so that he could beat his wife.

The girl, in an apparent bid to save her mother, refused to bring the stick. Enraged over not obeying him, Kumar caught hold of the girl’s hair and put her head into boiling water.

“My sister’s only fault was that she did not obey the order,” said Chandresh Kumar, the victim’s elder brother.

Chandresh said his mother had married Shravan Kumar after his father passed away some years ago.

 “Kumar always quarrels with my mother, and beats us over trivial things,” said Chandresh.

The girl has been admitted to a district hospital, where her condition was said to be stable. “She only wanted to save me,” said her mother Sarojini Devi.

Devi said she tried her best to rescue her daughter from the clutches of her stepfather, but in vain.

Kumar is absconding, and police said a case has been filed against him by his wife. Efforts are on to trace him.

Girls in these parts have often been subjected to torture and sometimes even killed. In the recent past, there have been case when girls have been killed by their fathers as they wanted a son.