A teenage girl who alleged that she was gang-defiled last month in India has committed suicide, police said on Thursday.
The victim committed suicide on Wednesday night at her house in Badshahpur village, 100km from Chandigarh, after police failed to register a case for over a month after she complained that she was gang-defiled by three youths.
In her suicide note, recovered by police, the victim said local police officers had failed to register a case of r*pe despite her complaint. She accused them of trying to pressurize her for a compromise, humiliating her and asking her uncomfortable questions by calling her to the police station repeatedly.
Police sources say that the Gagga police station supervisor, Sub-Inspector Gurcharan Singh, has been dismissed and a probe by a senior officer ordered into the incident.
The victim wrote in the suicide note that the police officer used to call her to the police station and asked “uncomfortable” questions. Sources said the people accused were influential people in the area.
In a later development however, police arrested two men and a woman in connection with the gang-r*pe incident.
Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh expressed shock and grief over the “tragic and shameful r*pe of a girl and her subsequent suicide following the pressure by the police to compromise with her defilers”.
In a statement in Chandigarh, Amarinder Singh said: “It is quite shocking that such heinous and shameful incidents were taking place every day which vindicated the Congress stand that law and order situation has touched its nadir. The way these incidents are taking place the time will not be too far when the President’s rule will be the only option in Punjab.”
He said that dismissing lower-level police officials was not the solution to the breakdown in law and order in Punjab.
“It needs to be ascertained as at whose behest the concerned SHO was trying to pressurise the girl to go for compromise that she was forced to commit suicide,” he said.