Hanged girls 'not raped or murdered', Indian investigators claim
Indian investigators accused of cover-up after suggesting the pair killed themselves
Two Indian teenage girls found hanged in May took their own lives and were not raped or murdered, police investigators said yesterday, fuelling further criticism of their handling of a case that sparked global outrage.
Initial inquiries suggested the cousins, aged 14 and 15, from a low-caste community, were raped before being hanged from a mango tree in Badaun district in Uttar Pradesh.
Their deaths added to public anger in India over a spate of rapes that has made violence against women front-page news, particularly since authorities seemed slow to react after the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old student on a Delhi bus in 2012.
But after five months of inquiry, the Central Bureau of Investigation said forensic tests contradicted earlier findings and it had concluded the girls were not sexually assaulted or murdered.
"Our probe found that the two girls had committed suicide and weren't murdered," CBI director Ranjit Sinha said.
A senior CBI official was quoted as saying the girls took their own lives "because of family pressure owing to disapproval of their friendship with a villager".
