CBI says Badaun teenage cousins committed suicide, not gang-raped and murdered

The girls, aged 14 and 15, were found hanging from a mango tree near their village in Uttar Pradesh on May 28 - a day after they had reportedly gone missing.

Autopsy reports had also indicated that they were raped before they died, sources said.

The victims’ families had alleged that the duo was kidnapped, gang-raped and murdered by five young men of a family in the village. They also claimed that the police refused to help when the girls went missing as they wanted to protect the accused as they belonged to a higher caste.

All five men arrested in the case, including two constables, were let off on bail in September, after the CBI refused to file a charge-sheet against them.

Reports said the federal investigation agency said the girls were not sexually assaulted. The CBI’s assessment was based on forensic tests at the Hyderabad-based Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics and a medical board which had dismissed the rape theory as “highly unlikely”.

It also subjected the girls’ families, witnesses and the accused through lie-detector tests. One of the main witnesses was also found to have lied about seeing the girls being dragged away by a villager.