Police said the girl did not return when she had gone to the fields to relieve herself.
Highlights
- The girl was attacked with stones, police said
- The identity and motive of attackers are not known yet
- Cops said they are pursuing all leads in the case
An 11-year-old girl, belonging to the Scheduled Castes, was found murdered in Bhadohi in eastern Uttar Pradesh on Thursday. The police said her head was bashed in with bricks. The death comes as the country is reeling from shock over the case from Hathras; the brutal attack on a 20-year-old and the aftermath of her death -- the 2:30 am cremation of her body by the police while her family was kept locked up.
As the Hathras police came under scrutiny, their counterparts in Bhadohi said that three people have been arrested in the murder case and that enmity between the girl's family and the accused was the reason for the murder.
The girl, the police said, had failed to return when she had gone to the fields to relieve herself. Her brother found the body when he went to look for her, the police said.
A murder case was filed against the accused last evening. Bhadohi's police chief said "rape was suspected but so far there is no confirmation".
"It could be a case of rape because there appears to be no other motive to kill her. She had enmity with no one. But this will be confirmed only when the postmortem report is in," said Ram Badan Singh, an officer of the local police, on Thursday evening.
The death of the teen comes two days after the woman from Hathras died in a Delhi hospital. Her horrific injuries and the alleged multiple police slips in the case has evoked outrage across the country.
The matter took a political turn on Thursday as Congress's Rahul Gandhi was detained by the state police on his way to Hathras to meet the family. Rahul Gandhi alleged that he was pushed to the ground and lathi-charged when he and Priyanka Gandhi were marching on the highway after their convoy was stopped by Uttar Pradesh policemen. They were later released and taken back to Delhi.
The Congress has tweeted on the Bhadohi case under the hashtag #JusticeForIndiasDaughters, demanding the resignation of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
"Is there no end to the cruelty BJP will allow? Barely 40 kms from the PM's constituency, another child has been brutalised. CM Ajay Bisht must resign," their post read.