Thaindian News

Lucknow, June 21 (IANS) Even as the state Human Rights Commission issued a notice to the Mayawati government on the issue of rising crimes against women, yet another rape of a minor girl took place in Uttar Pradesh, the fifth case reported Monday.

The incident took place in Sitapur district, about 90 km from here. Twelve-year-old Saleha was allegedly raped and gagged to death late in the afternoon. Her badly bruised body was discovered from a sugarcane field in Ganwapur village under Sadarpur police station around 10 p.m. after the family went around desperately searching for her. The girl had gone missing while returning home after attending ‘madrasa’ classes in another neighbouring village .

According to the FIR lodged by the victim’s father Sarfuddin, “My 12-year old daughter had gone with her younger brother for their routine madrasa classes. While they were on their way back, it started raining, so my daughter took shelter under some tree, while her brother managed to hop, step and jump back home.”

He said, “When the girl did not return home until sunset, we really got worried and went looking for her all over the place. Finally we found her body lying in a pool of blood in a thick sugarcane field; her mouth was gagged and her clothes all torn.”

Sitapur district magistrate Sanjay Kumar, who rushed to the spot soon after the matter hit the headlines on TV, admitted, “Prima facie it was a clear cut case of rape and murder. But since the victim’s family had not named any suspect, the FIR was registered against ‘unnamed’ persons.

“I am confident of bringing the guilty to book very soon”, he said.

Earlier, as many as four rapes, including one in which a woman was burnt alive, were reported from different parts of Uttar Pradesh, a day after an attack on a minor girl whose eyes were gouged by a gang when she resisted rape.

Also, a man was allegedly lynched by a crowd after he tried to physically abuse a married woman.

Two of the four rape cases involved minor girls.

According to state Special Director General of Police Brij Lal, “the cases of rape and attack were reported from Etah, Gonda, Firozabad, Kanpur and Farrukhabad.”

A 35-year-old married woman was allegedly gang-raped and burnt alive in Sabapur village in Etah, about 250 km from here, the official said.

According to the police, she was sleeping in her hut with her two children when five men attacked her. Realising that the woman had recognised them, the men doused her with kerosene and burnt her alive in front of her children, police said.

She was declared brought dead at the district hospital.

In the second incident, the body of a 13-year-old girl was found in a decomposed condition Monday morning in a sugarcane field in Katheli village of Gonda district, about 130 km from here.

Police said the girl, missing from home for three days, was kidnapped, raped and killed by three men.

Two suspects have been arrested and one is on the run, Brij Lal said.

Another minor girl of 14 years was sexually assaulted by two young boys in Mian Nagar village of Firozabad district, about 400 km from here. Police arrested one boy while the other is absconding.

The fourth rape case took place in Colonelganj locality of Kanpur, about 82 km from here, in which a teenager was allegedly kidnapped and kept in confinement in a hotel where she was repeatedly raped for three days.

While the police said she went there willingly, the girl said in her complaint that she was taken there by force by three boys after she got separated from her brother at the crowded Kanpur railway station.

A man was lynched by a mob Sunday night in Farrukhabad after he allegedly tried to molest a newly married woman while the couple were returning from an event. The woman was seriously wounded when one of the attackers fired his gun at the couple.

In a case that evoked widespread anger against the state government, a minor girl was blinded by two high school students in Kannauj district when she resisted their rape attempt Saturday. The 14-year-old Dalit girl is now undergoing treatment in Kanpur Medical College Hospital.