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Himachal: Month on, villagers want SIT probe into 90-year-old woman’s mysterious death
Akhil Bharatiya Harijan League, a Dalit organisation, has urged chief minister Jairam Thakur to order a high-level probe
Residents of the remote Trahai village bordering Shimla and Sirmaur districts are up in arms against police over the investigation into the death of a 90-year-old woman, Mehndi Devi, who went missing in mysterious circumstances from her house in November. Her body was found near her house a week later.
The Akhil Bharatiya Harijan League, a Dalit organisation, has urged chief minister Jairam Thakur to order a high-level probe.
The woman, a Dalit, lived with her adopted son. She disappeared from her house at Trahai village in Piran panchayat of Shimla district on the night of November 15 and was her body was recovered from a field near her house seven days later.
Kishori Lal Kaundal, the president of the Dalit organisation, said: “How could an elderly woman who wasn’t even able to walk on her own suddenly disappear? Her spectacles and walking stick were found near the house.”
He said that the villagers and police searched the village for seven days and suddenly her body was metres away from her home on November 22.
Suspecting it to be a case of murder, Kaundal questioned the approach of the police in investigating the case. “A month has passed and the police are groping in the dark,” he said, adding they have not registered a murder case yet.
Residents of the village have written an e-mail to the chief minister, chief secretary, director general of police and superintendent of police on December 10, seeking a probe by a special investigation team. “It’s unfortunate that the government has turned a deaf ear to our demand,” says Trahai Mahila Mandal president Sashikanta Sharma.
Police said the post-mortem report was awaited and they will proceed only after that. “The investigation is on,” Shimla SP Omapati Jamwal said.
