Rajouri police file case against 5 panchayat members, 2 held

JAMMU Following suicide by a 25-year-old post graduate youth, Rajouri police on Saturday booked five members of a Panchayat and arrested two of them for allegedly abetting the youth to resort to the extreme step in Targain village of Budhal teshil in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir.

Fazal Hussain’s body was found in a lake in the upper reaches of Targain village last Sunday after a Panchayat had issued a weird diktat asking him to drink urine of a girl he had allegedly raped.

Rajouri SSP Yougal Manhas said, “A case under abetment to suicide was lodged at Budhal police station under Section 306 of the RPC against five persons of the panchayat.”

Those booked have been identified as Molvi Abdul Latief, his brothers Mohammed Rafiq and Mohammed Bashir, Abdul Rashid and Molvi Ghulam Rasool, he said.

Rashid and Bashir have been arrested and search is on to arrest others.

A post graduate student Fazal Hussain of Targain village in Budhal was accused of raping a girl in the same village and subsequently the village Panchayat had asked him to compensate the family of the ‘victim’.

However, Fazal refused to pay the money and thereafter, the panchayat asked him to drink urine of the girl, to which the youth had sought two days time to get ‘mentally prepared’.

However, on Sunday, some shepherds spotted his body floating in Samarsar lake in the upper reaches of the Targain village.

Before committing suicide, the youth had recorded an audio clip on his mobile phone wherein he repeatedly said that he never raped the girl and the punishment of drinking urine shocked him and brought disgrace to his family. “The deceased in an audio clip, recorded just before his suicide, alleged that he was being pressurised by the village panchayat to drink the urine of a girl, whose parents and relatives had alleged that he sexually harassed her,” Manhas said.

During investigation, it was found that a panchayat was called in at the house of Latief in Dandote in Budhal, where the other accused passed a diktat against the deceased, he added.

Despite pleading innocence, the panchayat kept asking him to drink urine of the girl to get pardon, said the officer.