A nine-year-old dalit girl was raped and allegedly killed by a priest and three others. The girl’s parents alleged that she was raped and forcefully cremated by a priest and three men from crematorium in southwest Delhi’s Old Nangal village, police said on Monday.
The police has arrested the four people, including the priest. They have been booked for rape and criminal intimidation, under Indian Penal Code’s sections 302, 376 and 506, following the mother’s statement.
The statement of the complainant has been recorded underrelevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and the SC/ST Act.
They four men were identified as 55-year-old priest of the crematorium Radhey Shyam, and three other employees Salim, Laxmi Narayan and Kuldeep and all of them are known to the girl’s mother, said Ingit Pratap Singh, the deputy commissioner of police (south-west).
The girl lived with her parents in a rented house in a village opposite to the crematorium. She had gone to get cold water from a cooler at the crematorium after informing her mother around 5.30 pm on Sunday, they said.
Around 6 pm, the priest and other three-four people called her mother there and showed her daughter’s body claiming that she got electrocuted while getting water from the cooler.
The priest and the others prevented her mother from making a PCR call, scaring her off that the police will register a case and send it for postmortem during which the doctors will steal the girl’s organs, so it was better to cremate her, the officer said.
After the girl’s body was cremated, the woman and her husband cried that it was done without their consent. Nearly 200 villagers gathered there and a PCR call was made from the spot, the police said.
The PCR call was received, following which a team was rushed to the spot, they added.
Only burnt legs of the girl were recovered from the crematorium ground and the post-mortem report is awaited.
The heart wrenching news has sent shock waves across the country leaving citizens upset and enraged. Since then, #JusticeForDelhiCanttGirl has been trending on Twitter, while some citizens even naming it ‘another Hathras case’.
