Five Men Who Allegedly Raped And Hanged Teens In India To Go Free Due To ‘Lack Of Evidence’
The five men who have been accused of abducting, raping, and subsequently hanging two teenage girls in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh will walk out of jail this Friday. The five men would have completed 90 days in police custody on Friday. This is the maximum time a person can remain in police custody till they are charged. According to Yahoo News, Indian investigators have not managed to gather enough evidence to prosecute all the five men.
It was back in May that The Inquisitr first reported about this horrendous crime from India. Two teenage girls aged 14 and 15 — both cousins — were found hanging from a tree on the outskirts of their village. Their bodies were discovered after a frantic search by the villagers all night. The girls went out of their homes at dusk to answer nature’s call — a common practice in northern parts of villages in rural India, most of which lack toilets. The news of the rape and the subsequent killings gathered immediate worldwide attention and sparked global outrage.
Following the massive outrage, the Indian government entrusted the country’s top investigation agency, the Central Bureau Of Investigation (CBI), to investigate the case. However, over three months since the incident, they don’t seem to have garnered enough evidence to nail the suspects. The CBI said that it would not “as yet” file charges against the accused. However, this might change in the future as and when they get new evidence.
According to Kanchan Prasad, a spokesperson of the CBI:
“Based on our investigations so far, we are not going to file the charge-sheet at this stage. However, no one has been given a clean chit as yet.”
According to media reports, forensic tests carried out following the incident had ruled out sexual assault in the case — which is why the CBI had to stop short of filing charges against the five accused. However, there are allegations that the case is simply being quashed since the girls came from a lower caste family. The family had earlier voiced concerns about police apathy towards them for the same reason.
Rape laws were toughened in India following the infamous bus rape case that happened in the December of 2012. A physiotherapy student returning with her friend after a movie was gang raped inside a moving bus. She died later at a Singapore hospital where she was taken for better medical care.
[Image Via TheIndianReport]
