Class 12 Student, Suspect In Haryana Teen's Rape And Murder, Found Dead

Kurukshetra, Haryana: A Class 12 student suspected to be involved in the rape, torture and murder of a 15-year-old in Haryana's Jind, was found dead last night in the Bhakra canal. The body was decomposed and mutilated; a tattoo helped the 19-year-old boy's family identify him. The boy was naked, said the police.

The police had been searching for him since the young girl's body was found on Saturday, around 100 km from her home in Kurukshetra, with her private parts mutilated, signs of torture and 19 severe wounds. She had been gang-raped and an object had been inserted into her, said the police. Her lungs and liver were ruptured.

The girl had been seen with the accused schoolboy before she went missing last week on her way to tuition. Her family named him when they reported her missing.

"On the complaint of the girl's parents, we were treating the youth as a suspect for kidnapping. His body was found yesterday night from a canal near Jyotisar. Though there were no visible injury marks, the postmortem will reveal the exact cause of his death," said Kurukshetra police officer Abhishek Garg.

The boy had been dead for four or five days by the time the police found his body.

Sources say he may have been killed either for revenge or over "family honour".

Back-to-back rapes and killings have stirred anger in Haryana and concerns over the safety of women.

An 11-year-old girl was raped, killed and raped after she was dead in a separate incident in Panipat last week. On Monday, a 23-year-old woman was allegedly kidnapped and then gang-raped in a moving car in Faridabad near Delhi.

Haryana police chief BS Sandhu yesterday held a meeting with senior police officers and asked his force to give priority to rape cases.