Woman identified, she was victim of ‘hate crime’

LUCKNOW: The brutal gang rape and murder of a 35-year-old woman in Mohanlalganj was a ‘hate crime’, feel the city police, who on Friday managed to identify the victim.

Initial probe suggests the key suspect is a person familiar to the woman, as he took her along on Wednesday night. Her naked body, bearing injury marks on head, face and private parts, was found lying in a pool of blood on the premises of the primary school in Balsinghkheda village of Mohanlalganj on Thursday morning. Post-mortem examination confirmed that the woman’s death happened due to multiple hemorrhages. She was sexually assaulted and subjected to extreme cruelty. A blunt object was also inserted into her body, the autopsy revealed.

According to police the woman was employed as an outsourced staff (lab attendant) in a premier medical institute of the state capital since 2011 after the death of her husband in 2010. Her husband, too, worked as an outsourced staffer in the same institute and had died due to kidney failure. She was staying in a residential colony on Rae Bareli road along with her two kids — an 11-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son.

“Her identification has given a new turn to the incident and it is suspected that she was subjected to cruelty before being sexually assaulted and murdered to take revenge over some issue,” said a senior police officer supervising the probe.

He said she had left her work place at around 5 pm on Wednesday and went to her house, about two km from the institute, and again left the house at around 9 pm after receiving a call from a man familiar to her.

She had told her kids that she was going out for some work and would return in two hours.

The officer said the man, who had apparently picked her up from house, was the key suspect. He said at least five persons, who were frequent callers on the suspect’s mobile number, had been taken into custody for quizzing. ADG Sutapa Sanyal told the media persons that the cops had some substantial clues and at least four police teams were working to solve the case. The ADG has been asked by the state government to supervise the probe after facing criticism over the incident. How she was identified The deceased was identified when some of her neighbours approached the police after coming to know about the incident through newspapers. The police matched her face with her photographs and later her father, who stays at her parental place in east Uttar Pradesh, too, identified her after seeing the body at the KGMU mortuary.