ANGRY FAMILY MEMBERS, VILLAGERS REFUSE TO ALLOW BURIAL

UNNAO: The Unnao administration’s decision for an apparently hurried burial of the two girls close to the site they were found dead brought the officials to a face-off like situation twice with villagers and family members in a span of 10 hours.

First, hundreds of villagers, accompanied by the family members, confronted the officials and did not allow the digging of graves in the field. They forced the driver of the JCB (excavator) machine to turn away.

The villagers said they would not allow the burial till the case was solved or a CBI inquiry was ordered.

The officials, who are not speaking on the issue, had to put their plan on hold. The officials had planned the burial right after the post-mortem, which was to be conducted in the morning. The graves were to be prepared in advance as the Unnao police expected some resistance from the family members. The JCB machine was brought in from Mauravan to dig the grave.

Before this, the police had put up barricades at four places on the road leading to the villages. The number of policemen was increased significantly in the entire village, said a resident.

“Everyone believed that the police were trying to cover up the incident, and came out on the street,” he said. A similar situation prevailed on Thursday night when the JCB was called back within minutes of the bodies arriving from the Unnao morgue.

The family members threw themselves before the JCB machine in protest and made it clear they would not allow the burial at night. According to them, the burial could not take place after evening.

District magistrate Ravindra Kumar and superintendent of police (Unnao) Anand Kulkarni spoke to the family members several times, but they refused. The father of one of the girls said the burial would take place after his sons, who were not in the village, returned.