One of the main suspects accused in rape and murder of two minor sisters who were found hanging from a tree in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri was arrested after an encounter on Thursday.
The police shot the accused, identified as Junaid, in his right leg.
According to reports, he was the sixth and last accused arrested in connection to the heinous crime.
In a video surfacing over social media shows the police carrying the injured accuse out of a field as he stumbles and gets help from two police.
The police said, Junaid was one the two accused out of six who were friends with the minors. The accused got them into their motorbikes to come with them.
However, the girls’ family have refused to this claim and said no such friendship existed and that they had been kidnapped.
The police said a man, identified as Chhotu, had introduced the deceased to Junaid and Sohail.
“These two men took them to a sugarcane farm yesterday, where they raped them. After the girls said they would now have to marry them, they got angry. With help from Hafizul, they strangled the girls to death. Then they called Karimuddin and Arif, who helped them hang the girls to make it look like a suicide,” said area police chief.
All the accused involved in the crime have been arrested.
Meanwhile, the girls’ father has demanded death penalty for them and the state’s BJP government said the case will be tried in a fast-track court and has promised “such action that the souls of their coming generations will shiver.”
Notably, the bodies of two minor sisters belonging to Scheduled Caste (SC) were found hanging from a tree on Wednesday in Lalpur Majra Tamoli Purva village of Lakhimpur Kheri.
