On Friday, the Uttar Pradesh police have arrested two youths, from a neighboring village of Unnao district, for allegedly poisoning three minor Dalit girls in Asoha block of Unnao. According to the police, one of the arrested accused is a minor.
According to Inspector General (Lucknow range) Laxmi Singh, the main accused, Vinay Kumar, confessed to giving water mixed with insecticide to one of the girls after she continuously refused to give him her phone number. Ms. Singh added that according to the accused, the other two girls, all relatives, snatched the bottle and drank from it, despite his attempts to stop them.
“The matter is a fallout of a one-sided love affair. The accused gave some pesticide with water to the three girls. The two held are residents of Pathakpur village in the Asoha area. They were held on a tip-off,” said the police officers.
The Inspector General said that Vinay had come to know the girls during the lockdown as their fields were adjacent to each other. Over time, he began talking to the girls and developed a one-sided love for one of the girls, she said.
During the interrogation, Kumar said that he owned a piece of land at the village where the incident occurred. He said that one of the girls rejected his proposal. “When I asked her this month to give me her phone number, she did not give it due to which I was angry and decided to kill her,” he told the police. He then reportedly confessed about how he poisoned the three girls.
The officials added that the investigation was still on and that Vinay’s confession was being verified.
On the other hand, brother of the 17-year-old survivor said that she had never spoken of Vinay and did not have a phone of her own. “We are not fully satisfied. We still want an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation,” he said adding that his sister had stopped attending school since the lockdown and was helping out with the family’s fields and cattle.
“There was no fight, no enmity, no suspects in our mind. I just got a call while I was at work in Lucknow that this had happened. It didn’t happen, it was done by someone,” he said, demanding the strictest punishment for the accused.
