Demanding an impartial probe into the killing of a teenage girl from Patwatoli in the Gaya district, members of the Patwa (weavers’) community on Saturday met senior police officials and gave them a 7-day ultimatum to arrest the culprits involved in the gruesome incident. The district police on January 10 had termed the incident as a suspected case of “honour killing” but local people accused the police of shielding a young man of the locality, who belongs to a different community.
“A delegation of 11 members of our community met the Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police today. We demanded a fair and impartial probe, without involving the local police, into the gruesome killing of the teenage girl, within seven days. After that, we will intensify our protest,” head of the weavers’ association Prem Narayan Patwa said.
Thousands of members of the community have been protesting against the killing of a teenage girl from Patwatoli under the Manpur block of the Gaya district after her mutilated body was recovered on January 6 from a field not far from her home. The girl had gone missing on December 28. Her father had lodged a complaint at the Buniyadganj Police Station on January 4, alleging that his daughter could have been abducted. However, local police recovered her beheaded body from a field in the Joda Masjid-Baksaria Tola locality near her home on January 6.
Later, the Gaya Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Rajeev Mishra on January 10 told local journalists, “ Prima facie , it appears as a case of suspected honour killing with the help of a butcher.” He further said that “conflicting statements of the victim’s family raised suspicions of foul play and we suspected their role in the killing…her father and his friend, with whom she was last seen on December 31, have been arrested and sent to jail.”
The victim’s mother and sister, though, have been freed by the police. Later, the victim girl’s elder sister alleged that the “police put pressure on me to confess about the murder.” However, the police said, “The girl has recorded her statement under Section 164 of the CrPC and did not complain of any police torture or threat.”
“A fair and impartial investigation will be done in the incident and whoever is found involved in it would not be spared…similarly, no innocent person will be falsely implicated in the case,” Gaya District Magistrate Abhishek Singh told journalists in Gaya.
Meanwhile, thousands of looms in Patwatoli have gone silent after the incident.
