BAGHPAT: A day after the 19-year-old sister of a UP man accused of “abducting” a village girl he loved took poison and died after alleged “abuse and harassment” by local cops, his mother and second sister, 17, also died on Thursday in Baghpat’s Bachaur village. The three of them had consumed poison after a police team raided their house in search of the youth, a 22-year-old called Prince.
Seventeen-year-old Preeti Singh and her mother, 47-year-old Geeta, were cremated on Thursday by Prince’s distraught father, 55-year-old Mehak. It came a day after he had overseen the final rites of his other daughter, Swati.
An FIR has been lodged in the case against six, including a cop who has been attached to police lines.
'Police came twice, misbehaved, threatened & abused the women'
The case has been transferred to the crime branch.
IG (Meerut range) Praveen Tripathi said, "I met Mahek and assured him of an impartial inquiry. An SIT will be formed for the probe, of which he will also be a part."
Mehak told TOI: "Police harassed us for over 20 days after my son eloped with the girl on May 3. He has been missing since then and we don't know where he is. I was kept in a lockup. They abused the women in my family. We came back only after the gram pradhan, Vishal Singh, assured us that we will be secure. But we weren't. Now, my 14-year-old Sooraj and I are left alone to deal with this tragedy."
Mehak said, "On May 24, police came twice to misbehave with the women in the house. They threatened them the first time -- told them that if they didn't reveal Prince's whereabouts, there would be 'dire consequences'. They got scared as I wasn't home. They tried to pack their bags and leave. But the cops turned up once more."
He claimed that police barged into his house through the neighbour's terrace and ignored the women's pleas to come back when a man was around. "A cop told them that he would shove a stick inside their private parts and parade them naked. What choice did they have? They ended up taking the extreme step to escape the torture," he said.
Back at his home in Bachaur, things were still scattered everywhere. The glass from which the women drank poison was lying on the floor of the two-room house. "The poison they drank was so strong that eight rats died after coming in contact with it," said Mohini Panchal, Mehak's sister-in-law.
She also pointed toward a yellow saree that was hanging on the ceiling fan. "They had decided to kill themselves. If not by poison, then by hanging. Honour is a big thing. The police had threatened to strip them of it," she said.
A wooden door that led to the stairs to the terrace was broken. "Police entered the house forcefully, you can clearly see," said Vikas Kumar, brother-in-law of Mahek.
Villagers refuted claims the SSP of Baghpat, Neeraj Judaun, had made earlier saying due procedure was followed and there were women constables in the police's raiding party. "That's not true," Manoj Sharma, a local resident, said. "One cop used to come to harass the family regularly, along with a home guard. They would abuse the women so much that we had to ask our daughters to go inside."
Vishal Singh, the pradhan, said, "The SSP said that I was taken into confidence but I wasn't. Cops entered the house along with the kin of the girl with whom Prince had eloped. No female cops were present."
Commenting on the allegations of villagers, the SSP said, "Every allegation and aspect of the incident is under investigation. We will ensure a fair investigation and the guilty will be punished."
Villagers said they hope justice will be done. One of them pointed to a poster Mahek's children had made on a Raksha Bandhan day some years ago and pasted it on a wall of the house. It said: "Prince, Preeti, Swati, Sooraj -- Raksha Bandhan ka tyohar, bhai bahen ka pyar."
