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Assam teen missing since Sunday found dead; family says she was gang-raped by 6
Silchar police said security personnel fired blank shots to control the mob since some people were provoking the crowd that had gathered.
SILCHAR: A 16-year-old missing since Sunday morning from southern Assam’s Silchar town was found dead on Wednesday; her body floating in the Barak river that flows through the district. Her death touched off massive outrage in the town; scores of people blocked a prominent road and set some vehicles - one of them was a motorcycle owned by one of the accused - afire.
The teenager’s family told the police that his daughter was abducted, gang-raped and murder by six men and filed a formal complaint against them at Silchar Sadar police station. Two of the six suspects were immediately arrested; the other four are missing.
Her family blamed the police as well, complaining that the local police did not take their complaint seriously when they first reported on Sunday that their young daughter had gone missing.
“My daughter has been gang-raped and murdered after being kidnapped. Just after she went missing, we informed the police but today they called us for identifying our daughter’s body. I have appealed to senior officials of the police to catch all the culprits and hang them,” he said.
After news of his daughter’s death spread in the town earlier in the day, people came out on the streets in the town’s Ashram Road area and blocked a bypass road. At one point, the mob also pelted stones on security personnel and set two shops owned by relatives of the suspects ablaze. Police fired blank shots to control the mob. At one point, the mob pelted stones on police personnel and burnt down two shops owned by the relatives of an accused.
Superintendent of police of Cachar district Ramandeep Kaur Dhillon said, “Family members of the girl have claimed that their daughter was raped. They have lodged a complaint also.”
Dhillon said investigators were looking at all angles. The body has been sent for postmortem.
On the protests, she said, “People were angry and we can understand their emotions. Our officials tried to convince them by saying that we have arrested few of the accused. But some people were continuously provoking the others, so we had to take a step. Non-lethal weapons were used just to control the situation.”
