The two girls went missing from their house on the night of May 27 and their bodies were found hanging from a mango tree in the village orchard the next morning. (File photo) AP
Forensic tests have ruled out sexual assault in the infamous Badaun rape and murder case, in which two teenage girls were allegedly raped and then hanged from a mango tree in a village of Uttar Pradesh this May.
Sources in the Central Bureau of Investigation, or CBI, say the tests were done in the reputed Hyderabad-based Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics. The results, an official said, has cleared doubts about the theory of the cousins being sexually assaulted before being murdered.
The needle of suspicion now squarely rests on the family, the official added, and investigators are not ruling out the honour killing angle.
But the agency will still wait for the advice of a medical board which is examining the medical and forensic reports.
Earlier, the five men accused in the case - three from a family and two local constables --- had cleared the lie detector test. And though the result of this test is not admissible in court as evidence, it did raise doubts about the girls' families' version of the events.
The fathers of the two girls had alleged that the police refused to help when the girls went missing because they wanted to protect the suspects who belong to the Yadavs, a higher caste. The local police officers had suggested that it was a case of honour killing.
The CBI, which felt the postmortem report was unreliable, had been granted permission by a court to exhume the bodies for second postmortem examination. But following heavy rains, the graves of the girls along the river Ganga were submerged, and the attempt was abandoned.
The agency will not exhume the bodies now, as the forensic report has provided enough evidence to help crack the case, the official added.