The Aligarh police said they could slap the stringent National Security Act against two persons accused of brutally murdering an infant girl in the west Uttar Pradesh district. The incident caused much outrage in the area with locals staging demonstrations demanding justice.
The police also put rumours to rest and said that the autopsy of the two-and-a-half-year-old girl had ruled out rape.
The infant was murdered by “strangulation,” said SSP Aligarh Akash Kulhary.
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The officer said the police were “trying to invoke the NSA” against the two accused who have been arrested. They were identified as Zahid and Aslam.
According to police, the infant's family lodged a complaint on May 31 at the Tappal police station that their infant daughter had gone missing and was kidnapped. Even as the family desperately tried to search for the child, her body was recovered from a waste dump.
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The infant's father said the body was found in a mutilated state, perhaps to “ensure that she could not be recognised.”
He also accused the police of delay and laxity in investigation.
Mr. Kulhary said the accused and the victim's father shared personal animosity and the main accused Zahid had threatened the father two days before his daughter went missing. The victim's father owed some money to Zahid.
The victim’s mother demanded death sentence to the accused. “What animosity did they have with the child,” she asked on a television channel.
The victim’s father has demanded that other family members of the accused be arrested as the crime could not have been carried out without their knowledge.
Security measures at Tappal township, 50 km from the district headquarters, have been tightened as a precautionary measure after tension mounted there on Wednesday.
(with PTI inputs)