New Delhi: The 19-year-old Dalit woman who was allegedly raped and killed by four uppercaste men in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras had spurned one of the victims which “aggravated his feelings” and turned their “love affair” upside down, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said in its chargesheet. The chargesheet filed by the agency in the SC-ST court is based on the statement of the victim, given on September 22.
After nearly two months of probe, the agency concluded in its final report that the accused – Sandeep, Ravi, Luv Kush and Ramu – gang-raped and murdered the woman when she had gone to the fields to collect fodder on September 14 in her village Bhulgarhi.
According to the CBI chargesheet, Sandeep lived not too far from the woman’s residence and he “developed acquaintance with the victim two/three years back” which then “turned into a love affair”. The report mentioned that the two “used to meet in isolated places” and that “these facts are supported by many villagers”.
The chargesheet goes on to mention that several calls were made from Sandeep’s three phone numbers to a phone number belonging to the victim’s family and when the latter “came to know about the mobile calls exchanged between victim and Sandeep, they had a wordy quarrel with Sandeep’s family in front of his house”.
The call patterns were observed from October 2019 to March 2020 based on which the probe agency “established that the relationship/affair between victim and accused Sandeep was in good form till March 2020”. However, it turned sour after the victim’s family stopped the woman’s communication with Sandeep. “Because of her changed behaviour, Sandeep was in frustration,” the chargesheet mentioned.
The victim’s family has, however, completely denied these allegations.
Shoddy investigation by UP Police
Meanwhile, the CBI also revealed several stark details about the way the investigation was conducted by the Uttar Pradesh police. In its findings, the CBI said that in the statement recorded on September 19, the UP Police mentioned only one name as the accused person in the woman’s statement, despite her naming three people against the brutal act.
It also revealed that “though victim alleged molestation, her medical examination regarding sexual assault was not conducted”.
After the CBI took over the case, the Forensic Department at AIIMS conducted a medical examination of the victim’s body and stated that “sexual assault can’t be ruled out”. However, it mentioned, “since there was a delay in reporting/documentation/forensic examination for sexual assault, these factors could be responsible for the absence of significantly visible signs of genital injury.”
The findings submitted by the CBI have left red-faced the top officials of Uttar Pradesh Police who had claimed that no evidence of rape was found in forensic tests.
An embarrassed Uttar Pradesh government had to hand over the case to the CBI after the incident triggered massive public outrage and a political slugfest.