MEERUT: A Class X student, 14, was allegedly gang-raped and poisoned by a tuition batchmate and three of his friends on Thursday evening. She got home, collapsed at the gate, named her rapist and, within hours, died. Police, however, said the death by poisoning could have been a case of suicide.
“My sister told me she had left for her tuition around 3.30pm. Her class was from 4pm to 5pm. Around 5.15pm, she got home … When she reached the main gate of the house, she collapsed. Her chacha (paternal uncle) called out to her mother for help,” her maternal uncle said on Friday. “She had been poisoned.” She gave her mother a name, Lakhan, and said he and three of his friends gangraped her — she did not know his friends but could identify all four of them if they came before her — after which she fell unconscious.
“We rushed her to the hospital, where the doctors declared her dead,” the uncle said in his complaint to the police, on the basis of which an FIR was lodged against Lakhan, 18, and an unidentified person under the Pocso Act, and for gangrape, murder and poisoning.
Police, however, said a four-line suicide note had been found at the girl’s house. In the note, she accused “a tuition batchmate and his friends” of raping her and said that had forced her to kill herself. “Prima facie, the handwriting in the suicide note matches that of the girl,” Meerut SP (rural) Keshav Kumar said.
The family refuted this. “No suicide note was found at the house. The pradhan was here. Some 100-200 people had gathered at the house and no one told us about any suicide note then. This is not true. It is a case of gang-rape and murder,” the maternal uncle said.
Lakhan and one of his friends have been arrested. “Further action will be taken if more names come up during the investigation,” Kumar said.
(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme Court directives on cases related to sexual assault)