Two Unnao girls laid to rest amid tight security
Officials said the last rites were performed in accordance with the wishes of the family members of the two teenage girls
KANPUR: The last rites of the two teenage girls were performed amid tight security arrangements in an Unnao village on Friday, officials said. The funeral took place a day after there were alleged attempts to go for a quick burial. However, officials have denied any such attempt. The girls’ bodies were buried in graves prepared for them early in the morning.
Lucknow divisional Ranjan
Kumar, additional director general (Lucknow zone) SN Sabat and inspector general (IG) Laxmi Singh were present at the funeral. The officials spoke to the family members who were averse to the burial on Thursday night but agreed to have the last rites preformed on Friday morning. According to tradition, the unmarried girls were not cremated, but buried.
The two teenage girls were found dead in a mustard field at Baburaha village on Wednesday. Another girl, found unconscious, was still undergoing treatment in a Kanpur hospital. All three were cousins.
Unnao district magistrate Ravindra Kumar said officials on Thursday had spoken to the girls’ family members, who were not willing to take it (the burial) up immediately as they were waiting for their son to arrive from another city and had cited that the funeral cannot be done as it was already sunset.
The DM refuted reports of any pressure being exerted on the family and said the last rites were performed as per their wishes. When asked if the family had made any demand, the DM said officials, including the ADM, were present on the spot but they did not give any “demand letter”.
The DM claimed despite the presence of some outsiders, there was peace in the village.
Earlier, the sister-in-law of one of the girls had reportedly said, “I knew they were preparing for a forced burial of our girls, before anyone could know. It was like the Hathras case where they did the same with a Dalit girl like ours.”
She was referring to the Hathras gang rape and murder case
in which the police allegedly ensured a hasty cremation of a 19-year-old Dalit woman in the dead of night against her family’s wishes last year.
“Some of our men were with police since Wednesday night. The preparation for the burial,
when it was still dark, clearly showed that the police were up to something like Hathras,” she said.
Shashi Pal, a villager, said everyone told the officers that they would not allow a “second Hathras”.
The police, who released two brothers of the girls after questioning, have searched three houses in the last two days, a family member said.
“They have searched the house extensively, they screened all the papers,” said the mother of one of the girls.
There are 30 family members who live in three two-room houses belonging to three brothers, one of whom is dead. Among them, they have a little over five bighas of land. Each brother has roughly two bighas, which the mother of one of the girls said was not enough.
Of late, the grown-up sons took some land on a yearly lease but could not sustain it. As a result, some of them are planning to work in big cities to help their families financially. The village has a population of about 1,000.