The body of a 12-year-old girl who died under mysterious circumstances in the house of an Arunachal Pradesh MLA on May 20 has been exhumed from a cemetery in north-eastern Assam’s Lakhimpur district.
The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), not satisfied with the Arunachal Pradesh police’s investigation into the death, had recommended the exhuming of the body less than a week ago.
The girl, belonging to the Adivasi community, was found hanging in the house of Techi Kaso, a Janata Dal (United) legislator representing the Itanagar Assembly constituency.
“We exhumed the girl’s body on Saturday and handed it over to the Arunachal Pradesh authorities for post-mortem,” Lakhimpur’s Superintendent of Police Harekrishna Nath told The Hindu on Sunday.
The girl, from Line No. 4 of Dolahat Tea Estate in Lakhimpur district, was reportedly an occasional visitor to Mr. Kaso’s house at Burung Basti in Naharlagun, a town that along with Itanagar nearby forms Arunachal Pradesh’s Capital Complex.
Her parents, NCPCR member Rosy Taba said, had been working at the house of the MLA for 30 years. “They had accepted that their daughter had committed suicide. One can understand their ignorance, but the Naharlagun police erred in not filing an FIR on the incident and taking her body for burial in adjoining Assam without conducting an autopsy,” she said.
The All Assam Adivasi Students’ Union lodged an FIR on June 1 after a team of the Assam State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (ASCPCR) and the NCPCR investigated the case.
“The autopsy should help us know the cause of the girl’s death, particularly after the people in the house of the Arunachal Pradesh MLA pulled her body down before the arrival of the police, demolished the room where she was found dead, and burned the dupatta with which she was said to have killed herself,” ASCPCR chairperson Sunita Changkakoti said.
