TARANNUM, 40, sits forlornly in her hut. She intones: “A mother knows her child’s body best. My daughter’s toes and soles had bloodstains, her neck was bruised by nail marks. Before killing her, the police definitely violated her.”
When TEHELKA reached the Nighasan Police Station, Sonam’s second post-mortem report had just come in. After a dodgy claim earlier that she died of asphyxia, the second report admits she was murdered but is silent on rape.
The alleged sexual assault and murder of Sonam, 13, on 10 June at the police station in Lakhimpur district created a huge political furore despite UP Police pulling out all stops to suppress the truth. First, they got three doctors from the district hospital to fudge the autopsy report. The report claimed Sonam had committed suicide.
Why would a 13-year-old go to a police station to kill herself? This illogical story forced the BSP government to order a second post-mortem by a team of doctors from Lucknow. This revealed that Sonam was strangled.
The girl’s parents, Tarannum and Intezar Ali, a dailywager, were offered 5 lakh to buy their silence. The cops also intimidated the villagers, with the result that nobody was willing to testify. After much prodding, however, a village woman who had been grazing her goats near the police station at the time of the incident managed to reveal a little. Her version seconded Tarannum’s story that the “girl was molested and her private parts bruised”.
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