He sits on a plastic chair outside his modest, unplastered single-storey house in a village in Bihar’s Saran district, surrounded by relatives who have come to offer condolences and, for the past few days, politicians belonging to the Rajput community. Inside the two-room house, with no bathroom and only a hand pump for water, there is palpable tension — and a wariness of strangers.
“She was very skilled, good at studies. She could even drive motorcycles. She wanted to join the police,” he says, referring to his 15-year-old daughter, found dead in a well next to an abandoned house owned by the family on March 13.
A Dalit teen of the village and four others have been booked under POCSO Act and on charges of culpable homicide, murder, abetment of suicide, assault, criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence. The 15-year-old was allegedly in a relationship with the Dalit teen — their friendship, forbidden by caste lines, developing largely on social media.
While police are investigating if the teen killed the 15-year-old, they deny sexual assault. “The postmortem shows death from drowning. No external injuries were observed, and there is no indication of sexual assault,” DGP Vinay Kumar said in a statement on March 18. He added that the roles of four others and their links to the prime accused are being investigated, though they had got no corroboration yet of their presence at the scene.
The coming local polls have made caste a flashpoint in the case, and among those who have visited the girl’s family is BJP Saran MP Rajiv Pratap Rudy. Saran is Rudy’s turf.
As the spotlight lingers, the girl’s family — including her parents, two sisters and a brother — say they are exhausted. “For almost a week, leaders, ministers, media, everyone keeps coming and asking the same things. Will my daughter come back? I don’t want to speak to anyone anymore,” the mother bursts out.
Her husband asks her to quieten down, but the daughter interjects: “Mummy’s right. She’s gone, so what will all this crowding do? All they give are assurances.”
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A ‘friendship’
The village is predominantly Rajput, with only a few Dalit families. The girl and the suspect lived just 200 metres apart, but with the world of the two castes entirely separate, it was Instagram that brought them together, say sources. The girl was a Class 10 student of the local government school.
The well where the 15-year-old was found lies a few metres from a house owned by the family that has been abandoned and is in ruins and overrun by vegetation. The rim of the sunken well is level with the ground, with no parapet around.
The girl’s father works on the other end of the country, in Daman and Diu, at a mill, and rushed home on March 13 after hearing about her death. The family lives on his monthly earnings of Rs 18,000-Rs 20,000.
As speculation grows about how the 15-year-old and the Dalit teen kept in touch, the father says there is a single phone at home, which is with his wife. “I called every two-three days.”
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He says he last came home a year ago, and his last conversation with the 15-year-old was in February when her Class 10 examinations were on. “She asked for Rs 300 to buy a dictionary.”
On what happened that day, he says: “She had gone to collect firewood, that’s all I know… By the time I reached, she had already been cremated.”
In the Dalit part of the village, the residents have been watching the string of visitors to the other side. When anyone approaches, they slip indoors. Even those who open the door or respond, say they know nothing.
One woman says she “arrived only the previous day”, another says she and her daughter had been ill and knew nothing. The village head says he has “no information”.
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The suspect’s family has left, the residents reveal reluctantly. On where one can find them, a villager shouts back, “If you want details, go to the MP’s house, he will tell you”.
Neighbours around the house don’t respond to knocks at the door or queries. Unlike the other side, there are no outsiders here — including policemen or politicians.
The probe
Sub-Divisional Police Officer Pritish Kumar says they got to know around 5 pm on March 11 that a girl had died under suspicious circumstances. By the time police arrived, he says, villagers had retrieved the body from the well and placed it at the edge.
A preliminary report, based on statements from the mother and a villager, suggested she had been pushed, Kumar says.
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The body was sent for postmortem, and a written complaint, bearing the mother’s thumb impression, was submitted on March 12. An FIR was registered the same day under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and POCSO Act, naming the prime accused and the four others.
According to police, two neighbours told them that the girl’s mother was looking for her that day and asked them about her, before finding her at the family’s abandoned house with the Dalit teen. One of the girl’s sisters too reportedly arrived at the scene, and as a crowd grew, the accused allegedly fled.
A villager claims that “three to five men were hiding inside” the house. “They watched from the window, waiting for her. When she came, they caught her, assaulted her, and threw her into the well.” However, police have found no confirmation of this.
Police said that when the Dalit teen was arrested and questioned, he admitted knowing the girl, communicating on Instagram, and also speaking with her earlier that day.
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“Evidence indicates that the girl went to the family’s old residence at approximately 2:30 pm that day. The family members found them and raised a hue and cry. During this, the boy fled, and the girl was later found in the well. It is yet to be determined whether the fall was accidental, self-inflicted, or the result of being pushed,” the DGP said.
