The 28-year-old Hapur woman, who had alleged that her father had sold her for Rs 10,000 and that she had been raped by 14 people in the last four years, went to hospital three days after she reportedly attempted to immolated herself, the police said on Thursday.
According to the victim's statement to the police, she sustained burns on April 28. The police said that in her complaint she had mentioned that she had poured kerosene on herself.
The officer said the 108 ambulance service that was called to ferry the woman to the Moradabad District Hospital was informed that she sustained the burns caused by bursting of a kerosene stove.
The police officer pointed out that in the hospital the woman told doctors that she received the injuries while preparing food.
"Even the hospital records at the time of the victim's admission show that the injuries were not fresh," he said.
The Moradabad District Hospital in its information report to the district police said in Hindi that a 27-year-old woman with burn injuries was brought to the hospital by the 108 Ambulance service at 2.46 p.m on May 1.
The hospital memo also said that the women suffered burn injury at her home. The woman's third husband, who is in Delhi in connection with her treatment, said she was taken to the hospital on May 1.
A police officer said the woman has a history of troubled marriages and she has ended her marriage twice before.
"For the first three days, I got her treated at a private clinic near our village," said her current husband. "We feared there would be a police case. Even the landlord of the house where we stayed threatened to throw us out," he said when asked why he did not admit her to the hospital for three days after she sustained injuries.
On the cause of the burns mentioned in the hospital records and the 108 Ambulance service, he said, "Yes, we gave wrong information to the ambulance (service) and the doctors that she received the burns from the kerosene stove as we feared police action."
The third husband of the woman said he brought the woman to a Delhi hospital after she had been referred there by the district hospital.
The senior police officer said the discrepancies in the complaint are making the case challenging. "The woman was first married in 2010. She married another man in Shyampur Jatt in 2012 and all the three children of the couple are living with the second husband," the police officer said.
He said the woman had in late 2017 fled with a man of Shyampur Jatt village in Moradabad and the couple was living there for the last one-and-a-half years.
The National Commission for Women (NCW) has sought a report from the Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police O.P. Singh.
(Anand Singh can be contacted at anand.s@ians.in)
--IANS
aks/am
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)