Family of the two Dalit teenagers who were found dead in Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao have made claims of foul play. The girls’ hands were tied with dupattas (stole) and their “clothes were torn” when they were discovered in a field, the family of the girls claimed.
The two girls were found dead Wednesday evening. They were cousins. A third girl, also a cousin, was found in a critical condition nearby. She is undergoing treatment at a Kanpur hospital.
“Their clothes were torn. Hands and necks were tied with dupattas. I untied them,” the mother of one of the dead girls told. The woman said she was helped by her husband and the mother of the other girls in untying their bodies.
The police registered a case in the matter on Thursday invoking various IPC Sections including those related to murder and destruction of evidence. The FIR was filed on the insistence of the father of one of the girls. In his statement, the father said the girls had stoles tied around their neck and “dried foam around their mouths”. This led the police to suspect poisoning as the cause of death.
The eldest of the three girls who is under medical care lost her father last year. She had cleared Class 10 and has four sisters and two brothers. A team of six doctors from Lucknow is currently monitoring her health.
One of the girls who could not survive was a student of Class 9 and the niece of the other girl who died. She had four brothers and two sisters. Three of her brothers work as labourers in nearby areas. The sister of the eldest girl who died told, “The girls were good at studies, and they used to go to school regularly. They stopped going to school since lockdown due to Covid-19 began.”
Asked what could have happened to the three girls, the sister of the eldest girl who died said, “They can’t consume poison. Their hands and necks were tied with dupatta”.
The mother of one of the girls passed away less than two weeks after her birth. She was raised by her father who later remarried and has two more children with his second wife. One can ascertain the financial status of two deceased girls by the fact that they had only one mobile phone between the two families.
The three girls lived within a radius of 50 metres of each other at Baburaha village in Unnao’s Asoha. Students of the same school that was 1-1.5 km from their homes, the girls were very close and were always seen in each other’s company.
The girls went to their fields at 3 pm on February 17. They apparently bought packets of chips from a nearby shop owned by one Sabir. The fields were roughly 1 km from their homes in Asoha.
Families of the girls claim they found the three tied up in a field later that day. While two of the girls succumbed to what is being perceived as poisoning, one is battling for her life.
