Amlendu Bhushan Khan
CHATRA : A 16-year-old was allegedly raped by four men on May 3, and then murdered by their accomplices on May 4. Fourteen out of the 18 accused were arrested on Saturday.The district administration has constituted a medical board for conducting an autopsy on the half-burnt body. Condemning the incident as “barbaric” chief minister Raghuvar Das directed officials for strict action against accused persons in the case.
The victim was at her cousin’s house to attend a wedding, when she was kidnapped and then later gangraped. The matter was brought to the notice of the panchayat in Raja Kendua village by the minor’s family. As punishment, the panchayat imposed a cash penalty on the accused amounting to Rs 50,000, and ‘asked them to do sit-ups’. However the panchayat’s ruling didn’t go down well with the accused.
Enraged at the cash fine, they resorted to violence, beating the parents, who had to run away to save themselves. When they returned home, they found that the victim, who was in 8th grade, had been burned to death.
Condemning the incident as “barbaric” Chief Minister Raghubar Das directed district officials to take strict action against the accused persons.
A Special Investigation Team (SIT) has also been set up to probe the case, said Ithkhori Police Inspector Ashok Ram. “The absconding accused persons, too, will would be nabbed soon,” he added.
“The POCSO Act (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act) has been imposed against them. A police force has been deployed in the village and the victim’s family has been accorded protection,” Shambhu Thakur, Inspector General of Police (IGP) told local journalists. Mr. Thakur and Chatra Deputy Commissioner Jitendra Singh, along with senior police officials, visited the Raja Kendua village under the Ithkhori Police Station to probe the incident on Saturday.
Elaborate security arrangements have been made in the village to avoid any untoward incident.
“Among those arrested are the village Mukhiya (head) Tileshwari Devi and Panchayat Samiti member Ranjay Rajak. They are booked on charges of passing unlawful orders and tampering with evidence…but, the main accused in the case Dhanu Bhuiyan is still absconding”, said IG Shambhu Thakur. The police have also been investigating the role of others in the incident, he added further.
Meanwhile, Chatra deputy commissioner Jitendra Singh also met the family members of the victim girl and handed them a cheque of Rs. 1 lakh as financial assistance. Chatra SP, Akhilesh B Verrior and other senior district police officials have been camping in the village ever since the incident occurred.
Earlier on Friday, the accused Dhanu Bhuyian had allegedly abducted a 16 year old girl at Raja Kendua village from her cousin’s home and gang raped her before letting her go. The girl, a std. VIII student, had gone to her cousin’s house to attend a marriage ceremony. “After the incident, we approached the village elders who held a panchayat in the village to decide the punishment.
The panchayat imposed a fine of Rs. 50,000 and 101 sit-ups on the accused persons but he and his men got infuriated and started thrashing us…we ran away to save our live but when returned we found our daughter burnt and dead inside the gutted house”, said the victim girl’s father. The local Ithkhori police station official Ashok Ram too said that “the panchayat verdict seemed to have infuriated the main accused and he allegedly had reached the girl’s house and set it on fire”.
