Teenage girls found hanging in Assam were raped, killed, say police

The two teenage girls found hanging from a tree in Assam’s Kokrajhar district had been raped and killed, the police confirmed on Tuesday.

Kokrajhar SP Thube Prateek Vijay Kumar told The Indian Express that the post-mortem report is yet to come out. But, he added, the seven people arrested in the case have “confessed” to raping the girls — aged 14 and 16 — and killing them.

“Based on our interrogation of the accused, we have reconstructed the crime,” Thube said.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who had visited the families Sunday and directed the state police to conduct an expeditious investigation into the case, tweeted Tuesday that the case was solved. “Feeling extremely a sense of satisfaction that the culprits have been identified (sic),” Sarma wrote.

The 14-year-old victim was the sister of the 16-year-old’s father. They belonged to the Rabha community. The police had initially claimed it was a case of suicide.

The families, however, had alleged that they were killed.

SP Thube added that as per the confession, the accused were known to the girls and belonged to areas near to where the girls’ families live. He said that it was a blind case which police cracked within 72 hours.

Taking to Twitter in the evening Sarma said: “Muzammil Sheikh, Nazibul Sheikh and Farouk Rahman arrested for rape and murder of 2 tribal minor girls in Kokrajhar dist.The heinous crime was allegedly committed with the girls first choked to death & their bodies hanged in a tree to hoodwink. @assampolice did a commendable job.”