The killings that divided a village
JIND RAPE, MURDERS The brutal killings of two Dalit teens in Haryana’s Jhansa village has foxed the police. They have made little headway and only offer theories for the motive, ranging from ‘honour’ killing to suicide pact
Her liver was ruptured. A hard blunt object was used to kill her. From my experience, I can say that it was the work of someone bearing hatred against her, or jealousy or anyone who was angered by her resistance. DR SK DHATTARWAL, head of forensic medicine, PGIMS, Rohtak
them electric shocks and forced their heads in buckets of cold water. “They rolled an iron pipe over my legs as policemen stood atop it on either side. It was unbearable pain, but I did not know of my brother’s whereabouts,” said the boy’s 17-year-old brother, who needed to be carried because he couldn’t walk. The boy’s 16-year-old cousin was willing to strip later to prove the torture.
The police denied any use of physical force against the suspects, but the National Commission for Scheduled Castes will probe the allegations. Many relatives of the missing boy from other towns said they ran away as the police started cracking down on them. Investigators conceded that until the boy’s body was found, they focused only on his family and friends.
To turn up the heat on the family, the police locked the houses of the boy’s parents and other relatives and allegedly warned other villagers against offering them shelter. “I spent two nights in the cold in an open cowshed. The villagers had boycotted us. No one would even offer us a glass of water,” said the boy’s mother.
But there was a twist on January 16 when, late at night, the boy’s body was recovered from the upstream Bhakra canal near Kirmach village, 25 kilometres from Jhansa. The bloated body was naked under the waist. The boy’s cousin identified him from a tattoo on the arm.
The post-mortem examination was conducted at a hospital in Sonepat. The autopsy report said there were no serious external injuries on the body, but awaited more test results before judging how he died, but noted that the police called it drowning. The SP claimed that there was water in his lungs and the “most probable cause of death in such cases is drowning”.
The police had continued to detain the boy’s family almost 24 hours after his body was discovered. It was only when his relatives refused to cremate his body that the police let off them off on January 17.
Wrapped under a blanket on the street outside her house, the boy’s mother said that she did not know whether to grieve or feel relieved when her son was discovered dead. “I thought at least my son was rid of the tag of a rapist-cum-killer. I thought that would end the physical suffering of everyone in our family,” she said.
It was after the boy’s death that the police seriously began probing multiple possibilities, including so-called “honour killing”, the role of strangers who may have kidnapped one or both the teenagers, as well as a suicide pact between them. But Dr Dhattarwal said that the girl’s death was anything but a suicide. The boy’s family claimed that he was a very good swimmer like most other youths in the village that lies along the borders of two parallel canals.
While the police struggled to identify any unknown suspects who may have been seen around the teenagers, it emerged that on the day of their disappearance, the boy and girl were seen in a room in an under-construction house near their homes.
“My sister-in-law had seen my son and the girl in a room and had called out to them. They had scaled a wall and escaped. I got to know of it only when I returned home from work around 7pm,” said the boy’s father. He said had he known of the relationship, he would have pulled his boy out of school and approached the girl’s parents to “keep her in check”.
“The girl’s family belongs to a superior caste. If anyone could kill the children, it could be them,” he said.
The police have not cleared the girl’s family. “Since both families are in grief over the tragedy, we will take our time with the probe. But no one has been given a clean chit,” said Dalip Singh, the new SHO of Jhansa.
The boy’s body is found inside a canal in Kirmach village in Kurukshetra.
The boy’s detained relatives are released after villagers protest.
The boy’s body is cremated.
The National Commission for Scheduled Castes officials visits the two families.
The girl’s parents, however, say there is no reason to suspect them. “Would I kill my own daughter and then sexually assault her? Would it increase my reputation? The boy’s family had seen them together, so they may have a reason to be angry,” said the girl’s father.
The two families have found support from people of their respective castes. The two families have not ventured into each other’s lanes.
“The two castes do not get along in this village,” said a local resident.
Under fire for their alleged “mishandling” of the case, the police say they will “tread carefully” even as they have certain leads obtained from mobile phone signals detected near the spot where one of the bodies was detected. “We will string together every piece of evidence before concluding anything. We do not want to be in the dock for arresting the wrong people,” the SHO said.
It now appears to be a blind case with no breakthrough in sight.