Body of Dalit rape victim found hanging from tree
BULANDSHAHR: The body of a 19-year-old Dalit girl was found hanging from a tree in a field in Jahangirpur village on Monday morning. Police said that the victim was allegedly gang-raped by four youth from the village around two months ago. Two of the accused named in the FIR are still absconding.
The Gautam Budh Nagar and Bulandshahr police were initially fighting over jurisdiction as the victim’s residence falls in Bulandshahr, but the spot where she was found hanging falls under Gautam Budh Nagar.
Police said the victim’s family said that she had gone to the fields to work on Sunday evening. When she did not return even after sunset, they went to look for her. They
found her body hanging from a tree. Police sent body for postmortem. No suicide note was recovered from the spot.
“We have registered a murder case against unidentified persons in Sunday’s incident. In the previous FIR of gangrape, all of the accused were booked. I will look into the matter and see why the two accused were not arrested,” said Anant Dev Tiwari, senior superintendent of police (Bulandshahr).
On August 16, when the victim was returning after finishing work in the fields, she was allegedly kidnapped by the four accused and gangraped. She was rescued four days later from the house of one of the accused. An FIR against the four accused was registered at Jahangirpur police station under sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) pertaining to kidnapping and gang rape.
Swaraj greeted her with a tweet just after she landed: “Geeta – welcome home our daughter.”
Geeta, resplendent in a red-and-white salwar kameez and her head covered with a dupatta, later responded: “My heart is filled with happiness. I am touched the way I am being welcomed. In Pakistan, I used to often feel sad.”
She was spotted by Pakistan Rangers personnel in Lahore after she apparently crossed the border in a train more than a decade ago and sent to a staterun shelter.
She was moved from one shelter to another before she arrived at the Edhi Foundation in Karachi. It was Bilqees Edhi, the Pakistani woman who had cared for her and led a campaign for her return to India, who named her Geeta.
Prime Minister Modi praised the Edhi family as “apostles of kindness and compassion” and announced Rs 1 crore for the neighbouring country’s largest charity.
But a 30-minute meeting on Monday between Geeta and a family from Bihar that she had earlier identified as her own from a photograph provided by the Indian mission in Islamabad, didn’t turn out to be a happy reunion.
When the family met her at Swaraj’s room at Jawaharlal Nehru Bhavan, she was unsure about them, and said she cannot “remember anything about” her brothers, two of who were present, too.
Swaraj did her bit by prompting Geeta if she could recollect something from the past that would possibly be shared by the family.
But it didn’t work. For the time being, Geeta would be staying at a care home in Indore and a DNA test will be done to ascertain her parentage.
“If the DNA samples match,
then it will be a complex situation. We will ask Geeta to recollect things. We will make her sit again with them (Mahtos from Bihar) so that she recollects her memory,” Swaraj said.
Moreover, four families from different states had claimed Geeta as their daughter after her story captivated people on both sides of the border following Salman Khan’s recent blockbuster Bajrangi Bhaijaan, which has an eerily similar storyline.
Geeta told Swaraj that “her heart has been in India” and the minister thanked the Pakistani government for sending her back, which marked a rare moment of bonhomie at a time of frosty ties between the neighbours.
But the minister refused to answer a volley of questions on whether Geeta’s return would improve ties.
Her Pakistani benefactor Bilquis and her grandchildren, Saba and Saad Edhi, have accompanied Geeta here.