The child's family alleges she was raped and killed.
Three days after a young Dalit girl's alleged rape and murder in Delhi and her cremation without her family's consent, the police have yet to establish the cause of her death. The crime has generated shock and has also spurred a political controversy in the middle of a tense parliament session.
On Sunday, the nine-year-old, from a poor family, went to a crematorium near her home to fetch drinking water from a cooler but she never returned. Around 6 pm, locals who knew the cremation ground priest, Radheshyam, called her mother to the crematorium and showed her the body of her daughter. They claimed she had been electrocuted.
"Go home and sleep. Don't shout and cry about it," the girl's mother quotes the priest as saying while cremating her.
The priest and three others have been arrested and face charges under stringent laws that include sections on child sex abuse and crimes against scheduled castes and tribes.
The child's family alleges she was raped and killed. A senior police officer said today the postmortem was inconclusive. The four accused will now face lie detector and drug tests, he said.
Sharing the tragic manner in which she learnt about her daughter's death, the woman said some people came and simply told her the priest wanted to see her at the crematorium.
"When I went there he informed me that my daughter was dead. I asked how she died. I told them to dial '100' and call the police. He refused," said the mother.
"He pressured me to cremate the body immediately and dissuaded me from calling the cops. He said if you call the cops there will be a long court case, my daughter would be taken to the hospital where the police and doctors would take out her organs and sell them. He said he would perform the cremation himself as I couldn't afford it."
She says at around 7.30 pm, the priest and his staff had started her daughter's cremation. The family was forced to sit at a distance by the staff and asked to return the next morning for the child's ashes.
"It (the cremation) happened within two hours. He said if you report it, there will be a long case, people will talk. He said, 'how will you afford it. You beg at Pir Baba'," the mother told NDTV.
"My daughter has been raped. They made us sit aside, asking us to stay away as the flames were intense. He said, 'go home and sleep. Don't shout and cry about it'. I was threatened."
The woman rushed out crying and her family tried to put out the funeral pyre but it was too late.
"I was told to return at 8 am to collect the ashes. I rushed out crying and informed my relatives. My family came there and tried to put out the fire using buckets of water. They have not given any proof regarding my daughter," the mother wept.
In their extreme distress, the parents were taken to the police station. "We were beaten by the police. My husband and I were kept in separate rooms," said the girl's mother.
Ingit Pratap Singh, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (South East Delhi), told NDTV an examination of the water cooler found an electric current was passing through the machine; this appears to support the accused's claims - that the girl died of an electric shock.
"Forensic examination of the water cooler found an electric current... In the beginning, the girl's family said death was due to electrocution. Accused have also admitted death occurred due to electric current," the senior cop told NDTV, adding that tests will also be conducted on the accused's clothes.
"We will present the charge sheet soon... there is 60 days to present it," he said.
