Haryana teen murders: SIT scrambles ahead of deadline

With just 10 days to go for the two-month deadline fixed for the investigation in the mysterious death of a teenaged girl and boy in Haryana's Kurukshetra district earlier this year, the Special Investigation Team headed by Inspector-General of Police, Karnal Range, Subhash Yadav, on Thursday visited the native village of the deceased to interact with their families for the first time.

‘Lackadaisical attitude’

Questioning the alleged lackadaisical attitude of the police towards the sensational case wherein a teenaged girl is suspected to have been brutalised and gang-raped before being killed, lawyer-social worker Sudesh Kumari, who has been heading the campaign seeking justice for the teenager and her family, expressed dissatisfaction over the ongoing investigation.

“When we met Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on March 7 seeking a CBI probe, he set up the SIT to investigate the matter in two months.

But the police team visited the village today (on Thursday) for the first time when a little over a week is left for them to complete the probe,” said Ms. Kumari.

Dismissing the investigation as mere “eyewash”, Ms. Kumari said that the police did not appear serious about the probe. “None of the senior officers spoke to the girl’s family on the matter after the probe was ordered,” she said.

The girl’s father told The Hindu that two Inspector-level police officers had come to him 20 days ago, but there was no communication before or after that. “We are poor people, we have no choice but to believe the police. If not satisfied, we will again meet the Chief Minister,” said the father.

When contacted, Mr. Yadav contended that his team was on the job and police officers had visited the village many times.

The girl, a Class X student, was found dead in the fields in Jind along a canal on January 12, three days after she went missing. A panel of three doctors at PGIMS, Rohtak, who conducted the post-mortem, catalogued 19 injuries on her body.

The displaced uterus and torn perineum had led to suspicions that she had been brutalised and raped before being murdered.

Body found in canal

The body of the prime suspect, a teenage boy who had gone missing on January 9 along with the girl, was found in a canal about 20 km from their village in Kurukshetra on January 16.

The Kurukshetra police, however, maintained that it was a case of suicide pact and post-mortem had ruled out sexual assault.

However, both families have accused the police of acting under political pressure and trying to pass off the murders as a suicide pact.