Deaths may be ‘honour’ killings
Two teenage cousins found hanging from a mango tree after being kidnapped, gang-raped and lynched, may in fact have been murdered in a so-called ‘honour’ killing by members of their own family, police in India have suggested.
Photographs of the low caste girls, aged 14 and 15, hanging from the tree, provoked a worldwide outcry over the scale of sexual violence in India and atrocities suffered by its lower castes and ‘untouchables’.
The girls had been walking to a nearby field to go to the toilet one evening last month when they were allegedly seized by five men, raped and hanged from a tree. Three suspects have been arrested along with two policemen who refused to help the victims’ families when they first reported their daughters missing. Two more suspects have gone on the run. The state government in Uttar Pradesh, where the killings took place, has been accused of tolerating lawlessness and criticised over insensitive comments made by its political leaders.
But the head of police for the region has claimed the atrocity may not be as it first appeared. Only one of the girls had been raped and the five men sought for their murder may be innocent, he said. The victims had in fact been strangled before their bodies were strung up on the tree, he added. Anand Lal Bannerjee said the girls’ relations would now be questioned and their telephone records examined. Two men have been sentenced to life in prison in Russia and three accomplices to terms ranging from 12 to 20 years for the 2006 killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya. The 48-year-old, renowned for criticising Kremlin policies in Chechnya and human rights violations there, was shot to death in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building. Russia’s Investigative Committee says it is still trying to determine who ordered the killing. Pope Francis urged the Israeli and Palestinian presidents to “break the spiral of hatred and violence” in an unprecedented prayer meeting at the Vatican which he hoped would mark “a new journey” towards peace in the Middle East. Shimon Peres, the Israeli President, and Mahmoud Abbas, his Palestinian counterpart, embraced warmly and shared a joke before the Jewish, Christian and Muslim prayers in the Vatican gardens, where the leaders planted an olive tree. It probably seemed like harmless fun at the time. But for one young man in Perth, riding a motorised chilly bin loaded with alcohol down a busy street has led to trouble with the law. Police said they were patrolling the Hilarys area on Friday night when they saw the 22-year-old man riding the Esky down the middle of West Coast Drive. The Sorrento man has been charged with driving under the influence and will appear in court on a date yet to be set. A Michigan teenager carrying his 7-year-old brother on his back has battled heat, rain, fatigue and more to finish a 64km walk to raise awareness about cerebral palsy. Fourteen-year-old Hunter Gandee walked from his high school not far from the Ohio border to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He carried his brother, Braden, throughout the two-day journey. Yesterday, they strolled up a winding road towards the university’s wrestling centre. Asked how he felt, Braden said simply: “Tired.” Hunter acknowledges there was talk of stopping the walk around the 48km mark due to chafing on his brother’s legs. Called the Cerebral Palsy Swagger, the trek’s goal was to raise awareness about cerebral palsy.