Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna met the family members of the gang rape victim, who was murdered in Haridwar, on Thursday and assured them that police will soon be able to apprehend the culprits.
The CM further said that the case will be heard in the fast track court and announced Rs 10 lakh monetary relief to the aggrieved family. On the occasion, out of total Rs 10 lakh, Bahuguna gave cheque of Rs five lakh to the family with assurance of providing them remaining amount by Friday.
He announced that government will provide funds for the construction of toilet to each person of the locality. However, Haridwar police are yet to make any headway in the case of the 12-year-old girl being gang-raped and murdered even though three days have passed since the incident.
State director general of police BS Sidhu who reached Haridwar to review progress made by the police in this case on Thursday said that some persons are being questioned.
Police are working on evidences collected from the crime scene and investigations are progressing in the right direction. He expressed hope that police will be able to solve this case without delay. Sidhu further said that several teams have been formed of which some teams have been deployed in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh while two teams are working in Haridwar.
Moreover, irked over delay in arrest of the culprits in this case, the members of several social organisations and political parties including BJP, Congress and BSP protested on Wednesday and demanded immediate arrest of the accused and maximum punishment for them.
They expressed anguish over Haridwar police failing to ascertain whether the guilty were locals or outsiders and demanded removal of the Haridwar SSP. It should be mentioned here that a Class VII student of a Government school was gang raped by unidentified persons in a sugarcane field, near Bhatta Colony under Pathri Police Station when she had gone to answer nature's call in the open on Tuesday morning and later she succumbed to her injuries.
The post-mortem report of the deceased revealed that she was gang-raped and strangled to death. Following this, a case of rape and murder under sections 376, 302, 201 of IPC and under sections ¾ of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act against unidentified persons was registered in the Pathri Police Station on Wednesday.