NEW DELHI (INDIA)
The Times of India [Mumbai, India]
February 5, 2022
The temple priest who was arrested in an alleged gang-rape and murder case of a minor Dalit girl has claimed before a court that the victim’s father was present when she was cremated, but he had concealed it when his statement was recorded by police.
According to the chargesheet, she was suffocated to death during the sexual assault by Radhey Shyam and forcefully cremated by him and others. But the priest’s counsel claimed before additional sessions judge Ashutosh Kumar that that there was no evidence of murder, barring extra-judicial confessions.
“As per the postmortem report, the cause of death was electric shock.”
He also claimed that the eyewitnesses were planted. The chargesheet doesn’t have any word on from where they had seen the incident, he pointed out. “The witnesses have a history of criminal cases and are politicians,” he alleged.
He also claimed that the FIR was tampered with by inserting sections of the SC/ST Act by pen on a typed document, he alleged.