After a year, girl’s suicide case changed to murder
New Delhi: In an investigative travesty, the police have re-registered the mysterious death of 16-year-old girl as murder, more than a year after it had been lodged as a suicide case.
Two months after the death in July 2007 in east Delhi, the girl’s mother had reported to police that she saw two local youths flee from the site where the body was found. It also took repeated writing to the police by locals for 13 months before the police did a re-think on their investigation and changed the case to one of murder.
The body of the victim, Reshma, a student of class X in a government school, was found on the roof of her residence at West Vinod Nagar near Mandawali in east Delhi. Initially, the police registered a case of suicide.
However, within two months of the incident, the situation turned suspect after the girl’s mother said that she had seen two local youths fleeing from the their house immediately after she heard her daughter shout out for help. She had then rushed up to find her daughter engulfed in flames. The police has decided to restart investigations and are even contemplating a narco-analysis on the suspects.
According to Ajay Chaudhry, DCP (east), it was the constant pressure from the local residents which forced him to re-think the police’s original line of investigation. ‘‘The victim’s mother had not informed us about the youths for the first one-and-a-half month. The post-mortem report too was delayed. When we initially questioned the boys, nothing concentrate turned out and we decided to lodge a case of suicide.’’
‘‘However, social worker prahlad kumar aggarwal chairman foundation for comman man came to us a number of times. They even wrote to other senior people in the administration. Given their repeated pleas, we have decided to give the investigations another try and hence registered a case of murder on August 8 at the Mandawali police station. We might even subject the suspects to a narco-analysis soon,’’ DCP Chaudhry added.
Riyazuddin Khan (42), the father of the girl who works as a DJB contractor, recalls the day of the incident.
‘‘My daughter returned from school on July 9 and told us that one Zaki Ahmed (18), her classmate, had harassed her after school. He was a friend of Ashif Mohammad, who is our neighbour, who we know well. That evening when Reshma went to the terrace to fetch homemade pickle, my wife heard the girl scream out and ran upstairs. She saw Ashif and another youth fleeing towards the main road. We rushed her to a local hospital where she was declared brought dead,’’ said Riyazuddin.
Riyazuddin said that though they informed the police about the incident,the police was reluctant to act. ‘‘We petitioned with the local police, ACP, DCP, the police commissioner and even the chief minister. Yet it took 13 months for them to register a murder case. I hope my daughter will be relieved,’’ he said.
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