To protest against alleged police inaction into the disappearance of a 17-year-old school girl from their colony, whose body was later found in neighbouring Rohini, a large number of residents of Mangolpuri took to the streets on Friday and resorted to violence.
The body was found hours after the girl went missing and her family lodged a complaint.
Amid allegations of apathy by the family and other protesters, who assembled outside the Mangolpuri police station and damaged public property, including DTC buses, the police said although prima facie it appeared to be a case of suicide they were probing all possible angles.
While the family of the victim accused that the girl had been murdered by 20-year-old Arif, in whose house her body was found, the suspect, who is under detention, claimed that the girl had committed suicide. To back his claim, Arif has purportedly produced a hand-written suicide note, the authenticity of which was being verified, said the police.
According to the girl’s uncle, she had left home for her school located close to her house around 7 a.m. on Thursday. But when she did not return home at her usual time, which was around 1-30 p.m., the family got worried.
“Since she did not carry a mobile phone there was no way to contact her directly. We started searching for her and spoke to her friends and school authorities who told us that she had not come to the school on Thursday. Later, we approached the police who showed no urgency in dealing with our complaint and did not make any serious efforts to find her,” he said.
The girl’s uncle added that around 9 p.m. a neighbour visited their house to inform that the body of a young girl had been found at a house in Rohini. When the family members reached the spot, they were told that the body had been taken to South Rohini Police station. Here the family identified it as that of their missing girl.
The house, in which the body was found, is on the first floor of a building located near Jaipur Golden Hospital and is surrounded by several shops, some of which are on the ground floor of the building itself.
Arif had taken the house on rent despite having his own house in the same neighbourhood. He often visited this rented premises with his friends.
“There were ligature marks around the girl’s neck. Arif took her to that house where he raped her and then strangled her to death,” said the victim’s uncle.
Arif purportedly told the police that he and the girl were friends and on Thursday she met him on her way to school and the two then went to his rented accommodation.
“He told us that around noon, he left the house briefly. When he returned, he saw that the girl was hanging from a ceiling fan. He said he brought the body down and then left the place as he got a little scared. A few hours later, he himself made a call to the Police Control Room,” said a senior police officer, who added that despite having made the PCR call Arif was not present at his rented house when police reached there and recovered the body. He was subsequently detained from close to his house.
“In the suicide note that Arif provided us, the girl has not given any details about what was the reason behind her taking the step. But the note states that she was in love with Arif and wanted to ‘tell him something’,” said the officer.
