The Assam Police has ruled out any rape angle into the brutal murder of a woman in Assam’s lakhimpur district last week even as several organisations rocked the streets of lakahimpur town terming the incident as a rape & murder case and protested against the failure of the police in arresting the accused.
“I am yet to receive the copy of the autopsy report. However, my officers who were camping in Guwahati obtained it today. The post-mortem report rules out any rape angle,” said lakhimpur superintendent of police PK Bhuyan. “The death was caused by lethal injury to head by a blunt weapon and there is no indication of rape,” said the SP.
On Friday last, police in lakhimpur district had found the severely injured woman. She was shifted to a local hospital from where she was referred to the Guwahati Medical College and Hospital, where she succumbed to her injuries on Sunday. Some locals claimed that they had seen the woman thrown out of the vehicle by four co-passengers. local organisations and individuals took to the streets terming it as a case of gang-rape & murder and demanded immediate arrest of the accused.
Some local newspapers and television channels even compared the incident with the December 16 New Delhi gang-rape.The family members of the victim alleged that the woman was raped and her eyes were gorged out by four men inside a tempo.The incident, however, drew mixed reactions in Assam and several organisations have urged a restraint on media reporting. The Electronic Media Forum, Assam (EMFA) - a platform of the electronic media persons in Assam - termed it as an ‘exaggeration of facts’ by certain media houses.
“The reporting over the incident at lakhimpur is an example of exaggeration of facts. It is high time the electronic media in Assam and entire country must introspect,” said EMFA president, Nava Thakuria.
He also brought home the point that there should be a mechanism to ‘monitor’ these ‘exaggeration’ by the media, particularly by the electronic media. “We are still a developing nation and there are many illiterate and uneducated viewers across the country, who can be influenced wrongly by the these kinds of electronic media reporting. A mechanism to monitor these kinds of reporting will help all,” he said.