The 19-year-old Dalit woman who died in September this year in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras district was gangraped and murdered by the accused, the Central Bureau of Investigation, which is probing the case, said in the chargesheet filed before a court on Friday. The death of the woman had sparked massive outrage across the country, and the Yogi Adityanath government had issued a statement saying that the woman was not gangraped.
The CBI has named four accused in the alleged gangrape and murder case of a 19-year-old Dalit woman in Hathras. The agency has invoked charges of gangrape and murder against Sandeep, Luvkush, Ravi and Ramu and the local court in Hathras has taken cognisance, the lawyer for the accused told reporters outside the court.
The Dalit woman was allegedly raped by four upper-caste men in Hathras on September 14. She died on September 29 at Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital during treatment. The victim was cremated in the dead of the night near her home on September 30. Her family alleged they were forced by the local police to hurriedly conduct her last rites. Local police officers, however, said the cremation was carried out "as per the wishes of the family".
The agency has looked into the role of accused Sandeep, Luvkush, Ravi and Ramu who are in judicial custody, officials said. They were also put through different forensic tests at the Forensic Science Laboratory in Gandhinagar, they said.
The CBI investigators had also met doctors at the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital, where the victim was treated after the alleged gangrape on September 14, they said. The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh had faced a lot of flak for the case which was later transferred to the CBI. The state government had even enlisted the services of a public relations company to issue statements that the 19-year-old was not gangraped, and that there was a "conspiracy to push the state into a caste turmoil."
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The CBI had constituted a team to probe the incident and handed over the probe to its Ghaziabad unit. The team has already recorded statements of family members of the victim.
With PTI inputs