Brutality of the crimes sends shockwaves - Inmates drug guards, abseil from jail using bed sheets

MUMBAI: An Indian student walks past a wall pock-marked with bullet holes opposite the Nariman House cultural and religious centre of the ultra-orthodox Jewish Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Mumbai yesterday. —AFP

NEW DELHI: Indian police said yesterday they were investigating the gang rape and murder of two teenage girls whose mutilated bodies were found just hours apart in a state bordering New Delhi. The brutality of the crimes in Haryana, a deeply conservative state in northern India, has created shockwaves even in a region with a grim record of violence against women. Police are pursuing a group of men suspected of raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl from Kurukshetra district whose badly disfigured body was found dumped in a stream on Friday.

District police chief Abhishek Garg said the girl had sustained terrible internal injuries suggesting the attackers used a blunt object during the attack. "At least four men are suspected to be behind the crime," said district police chief Abhishek Garg. "A massive search is underway to arrest the perpetrators", he added. Just hours after the grisly discovery, police in Panipat district on Saturday found the body of a 12-year-old girl in a pond. Panipat police chief Rahul Sharma told AFP that two men, both neighbors of the victim, had been arrested over the crime.

Both had confessed to luring the girl to their house before raping and killing her, Sharma said. The crimes underscore India's atrocious record on sexual violence, which remains high despite authorities vowing to stamp out the scourge. Official figures show nearly 36,000 minors were sexually assaulted in 2016. A UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2014 said one in three rape victims in India was a minor and expressed alarm over the widespread sexual abuse of children.

In a separate incident on Sunday, a 22-year-old woman was allegedly kidnapped and raped inside a car by four men in Haryana before being dumped by her attackers on a roadside. The high rates of assault continue despite an overhaul of laws in the wake of a high-profile fatal gang rape of a Delhi student in 2012 that sparked mass protests. That crime shone a spotlight on the rising levels of violence against women in India, and saw the introduction of tough penalties for offenders and accelerated trials through court.

Inmates drug guards

In another development, three inmates have made a daring escape from a high-security jail in eastern India using desserts laced with sedatives and bed sheets to abseil down the walls, a prison official said yesterday. The trio of Bangladeshis incarcerated at Alipore Jail in Kolkata remain at large after pulling off the audacious prison break over the weekend. West Bengal state's prison director Arun Gupta said the runaways made their dash after drugging their jail guards and fellow inmates with spiked dessert. "The trio mixed sedatives in the sweets brought from the jail canteen, and served these to inmates and some prison guards on Saturday night," said Gupta.

They then cut through the bars on their cell window and used bed sheets knotted into a length to descend the six-meter walls to the ground below. Their absence was not detected until prison wardens conducted the morning head count, Gupta said. "It appears guards on the watch towers were sleeping when the three escaped. Three wardens have been suspended," he said. A hunt is underway for the fugitives. In 2016 eight suspected members of a banned Islamist group escaped from a jail in Bhopal in central India after slitting the throat of a prison guard. - Agencies