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Young woman burnt alive in Azamgarh

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

An 18-year-old backward-class woman was subjected to humiliation and torture before being burnt alive by a gang of armed men in Azamgarh district of eastern Uttar Pradesh on Sunday.

The shocking incident took place in Gorath village under Sidhari police station on the outskirts of Azamgarh town, barely a kilometre from the official residence of the district police chief.

The woman, Guddan, was taken forcibly from her home to a neighbouring village by the gang and burnt alive after being humiliated and tortured. All this happened in the daytime.

A state home department spokesman confirmed the incident, but on the basis of a report from the local police claimed that the girl had "committed suicide by setting herself ablaze".

Local sources, however, accused the Azamgarh police of soft-pedalling the case and trying to give it a different turn to save the influential culprits.

Later, taking cognisance of the incident, the state government ordered the suspension of the local police inspector and sub-inspector.

According to the first information report lodged by the victim's father Jagdish Bari, Guddan was alone in their house when Shyampari Chauhan of a neighbouring village barged in with over a dozen armed men who dragged her out and took her to their village.

Eyewitnesses later told the father that Chauhan first snipped off the girl's hair as she struggled and screamed, then he and his toughs ripped off her clothes and paraded her naked. Some said Chauhan even ran scissors over her breasts.

Later they dragged the hapless Guddan back to her village, poured kerosene over her badly bruised body and set her ablaze. The girl somehow stumbled up to her doorstep where she fell unconscious.

Her father, who had by then returned home, rushed to the nearest public telephone to call the Sidhari police station. The policemen accompanied father and daughter to the Azamgarh district hospital where she was admitted. But with more than 80 per cent burns, she did not survive long.

The sources said the influential Chauhan family is now using all its money and connections to give a different colour to the case. Thus, Superintendent of Police Subhash Chandra described the girl as "characterless" and "having an illicit relationship with Chauhan".

SP Chandra told rediff.com on the telephone, "The girl was at Chauhan's beck and call. But yesterday [Sunday] when he came to call her over to his place there was an altercation between the two and she threatened to get him beaten up. This provoked the Thakur, who returned after a while with his men and took Guddan away to his village."

While the police officer confirmed the physical torture to which the girl was subjected, he maintained, "The girl ended her life by setting herself ablaze." But he failed to explain why the police had not been able to arrest the main culprit.

It was only after the state home department began making inquiries that the Azamgarh police registered a case of assault, abduction, outraging of modesty and abetment of suicide.

Living in abject poverty, Guddan's family earned its living by washing dishes in rich households. Their pathetic condition could be gauged from the fact that the father did not have money to buy drugs and ointments prescribed by the doctor in the government hospital, where recently revised rules allow free treatment only to ministers, former ministers, and members of the state legislature and Parliament.

Local villagers are said to have contributed for Guddan's funeral. Later, the district magistrate sanctioned an ex-gratia payment of Rs 5,000 to her father for the last rites.

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