Pictured for the first time, these are the two teenage girls who were
raped and murdered before their bodies were found swinging from a mango tree in
northern India this week.
Three brothers today confessed to attacking and killing the young
cousins, named Murti and Pushpa, in a case which has horrified India.
The crime provoked national outrage after it emerged that police in the
village of Katra initially refused to investigate the girls' murder due to
their low-caste status.
The alleged killers - Pappu, Awadhesh and Urvesh Yadav - are members of the dominant Yadav caste, to which most of the local police also belong.
Low-caste villagers from the community in Uttar Pradesh state have
expressed concern that they could also be targeted in the wake of the
horrifying attacks.
He added that the authorities are still searching for two more suspects,
and have prepared identity sketches in a bid to track them down.
In addition to the three suspected murderers, two police officers have been arrested for allegedly ignoring the victims' parents when they reported that the girls, aged 14 and 15, had gone missing.
The girls' murder has prompted protests in New Delhi and other Indian
cities, in an echo of the outpouring of grief which came when a student was
raped and killed on a bus in the capital in 2012.
In their home village, poor locals described their worries that they
would be vulnerable to a similar attack in the future.
Murti and Pushpa disappeared on Tuesday night after going to a field
near their home to relieve themselves, because they do not have their own
toilet.
Most
low-caste families are in the same situtation, with only the richest residents
have access to a private bathroom.
'We are scared,' villager Renu Devi told CNN. 'If this could happen to
them, it could happen with us also.'
Murti's father Sohan vowed to seek justice for his daughter as he
described how she was a keen language student at the private school where he
paid for her education.
'She liked studying English,' he told the Independent on Sunday. 'And
when she completed school she wanted to get a job.'
Yesterday, his wife called for the killers to be executed, saying: 'Money can't bring back my daughter but the hanging of her killers would give peace to her soul.'
And Pushpa's father Babu Ram accused the police of ignoring his family
because they belong to the Dalit caste - formerly known as 'untouchables'.
He said: 'At the police station, the first thing they asked is what
caste we came from. And when we told them we were Dalits, they didn't entertain
our complaints.'
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