Ranchi: Police on May 5 arrested 16 people a day after a 16-year-old girl was burned alive after gangrape at her home in Jharkhand, eastern India.
The case was filed against 20 accused of which four are still missing, a senior police officer said. “The accused men are absconding. A special investigation team has been set up which is looking into the case,” he said.
The incident took place in the Maoist-affected Chatra district of the state.
The girl’s family said the four men, allegedly drunk, kidnapped the girl on May 3 night from her house when everyone was away at a wedding. The men allegedly took her to a deserted spot and raped her.
When the girl’s father went to the village council head and other members of the panchayat, they asked the family to “settle the issue” and ‘punished’ the accused men by asking them to do 100 sit-ups and pay 50,000 rupees.
The accused, enraged over the girl’s family for approaching the village council, barged into the her home, beat her parents and then set her on fire, the family said.
Police said they would take action against the village council leaders for trivializing the matter. The district administration has also announced a financial support of 250,000 rupees to the victim’s family.
The incident occurred amid nationwide public anger over child rapes, beginning with the kidnapping, rape, torture and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir.
This prompted the federal government to issue an ordinance or emergency order in April to bring in death penalty for child rape.
The government has also raised the minimum jail term for rapists to 10 years if the victims are over 16 years old. People convicted of rape of a girl below 16 years will be sentenced for a minimum of 20 years. Also, the center says rape probes and trials cannot take more than two months each.
Source: ndtv.com