Ishrat Jahan, mother of the boy, filed a complaint with the State Human Rights Commission against the illegal detention of her 9 family members urging the body to take immediate action.
Waquar Hasan | Clarion India
NEW DELHI — A 17-year-old Muslim boy was found dead in a canal of Lakhimpur Kheri district in Uttar Pradesh on Friday, a week after he went missing along with a Hindu girl.
Talking to Clarion India over the phone, family members of the deceased (name withheld as he is a minor) alleged that he was murdered as there were injury marks on his body.
“When we found the dead body, it appeared that he was beaten up. There were injury marks on his body and his teeth were broken. One of the eyes had injury marks and there was fracture on the both hands. He was brutally beaten up,” said Sartaj Ahmed, uncle of the boy.
The couple went missing early this month. Family members of the boy had filed a missing complaint at the local police station in Oil town where the incident happened. However, the police did not act on their complaint. An FIR was lodged at the Police Station Kheri against the boy under IPC Sections 363, 366 on the complaint of Jayanti Awasthi, mother of the girl. Following the FIR, the administration bulldozed some part of the house belonging to the family members of the boy.
Ahmed said that his entire family were put into the lockup asking them to bring the boy and the girl. “How can we find them out if we were put in the lockup…we were released when the body of the boy was found,” he said.
On 8 January, Ishrat Jahan, mother of the boy, filed a complaint with the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) against the illegal detention of her 9 family members urging the body to take immediate action.
“The police are not paying attention to the missing son of the applicant. The applicant suspects that her son would be killed by people from the particular community,” she said in her complaint with the rights body.
Syed Mohammed Haider Rizvi, an advocate, wrote to the National Human Rights Commission demanding an investigation in the “illegal custodial torture of the family of the deceased/accused in PS Kheri, Lakhimpur Kheri as per the details in preceding paragraphs, illegal bulldozing of a portion of the house/residence of the accused without any legal empowerment/authority and circumstances resulting in the demise of the accused, alleged to have died on account of drowning in the stream”.
“They were harassed, humiliated and tortured while in police custody which continued for over a week,” reads the letter.
Ahmed said an FIR was registered after the victim’s body was found, but the police did not taking any action. “His dead body was found but the girl is still missing. The police are not making efforts to find out whether the boy died by drowning or was murdered. Where is the girl? If the girl is alive, her family members are involved in his death,” he said.
