DGP remarks rile Budaun victims' kin

A cloud of uncertainty persists over the families of the two teenaged cousins, who were gang-raped and murdered in Budaun district of Uttar Pradesh last month, after the UP police chief’s recent remarks. 

DGP A L Banerjee had said that property could be one of the motives for the murders, or that it could be a case of honour killings and the accused could be innocent. 

The families of the victims are holding a dharna under the same tree from which the two girls were found hanging, to protest against the DGP’s comments.

“We have too little land property to have any kind of dispute between us... it’s totally untrue that there was any dispute in our families over property,” said the father of one of the victims, referring to the DGP’s comment.

“We fear that an attempt may be made to implicate us in the killings and allow the real killers to escape punishment,” he said, adding that they could not expect justice now that the state police chief had virtually given a clean chit to the accused. 

The UP government has already written to the Centre recommending a CBI probe. It has also formed a special investigation team (SIT) to look into the matter.

However, the aggrieved family members refused to record their statements before the SIT, saying they had no faith in the probe ordered by the state. They said that they were prepared to undergo a lie-detector test.

The teenaged cousins, aged 14 and 15 years, were found hanging from a tree at an orchard outside their Katra Sadatganj village in Budaun district last month. Though earlier reports said that both had been gang-raped, the DGP later claimed that only one of them had been raped.