Two Indian teenage girls found hanged in May took their own lives and were not raped or murdered, police investigators told media yesterday, fuelling further criticism of their handling of a case that sparked global outrage.
Initial inquiries suggested the cousins, aged 14 and 15, from a low-caste community, were raped before being hanged from a mango tree in Badaun district in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh
Their deaths added to public anger in India over a spate of rapes that has made violence against women into front-page news, particularly since authorities seemed slow to react after the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old student on a Delhi bus in 2012.
But after five months of inquiry, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said further forensic tests contradicted earlier findings and it had concluded the girls were not sexually assaulted and were not murdered.
“Our probe found that the two girls had committed suicide and weren’t murdered,” CBI director Ranjit Sinha told the Hindustan Times.