Police have arrested six men for allegedly raping and murdering two minor Dalit girls in Lakhimpur Kheri area of India's Uttar Pradesh state a day after the bodies of the sisters were found hanging from a tree in their village, a senior police official said on Thursday.
The arrested individuals have been identified as Suhail, Junaid, Hafizul Rehman, Karimuddin, Arif, and Chhotu.
According to Sanjeev Suman, Superintendent of Police, Lakhimpur Kheri, the accused took the girls aged 17 and 15 to a sugarcane field where they were gang-raped allegedly by Suhail and Junaid while the others kept guard around the area.
The official revealed that the deceased girls and the accused were known to each other.
"Yesterday, the girls were lured to farms and raped by Sohail and Junaid. As the girls wanted the accused to marry them, Sohail, Hafizul, and Junaid strangulated and killed them. They then called Karimuddin and Arif and hanged the girls to eliminate any proof," Suman told reporters at the district police headquarters on Thursday.
The arrests came after family members of the victims and villagers blocked a road, demanding justice for the girls when the police reached their home in Lalpur Majra Tamoli Purva Village to collect the bodies for post-mortem.
The latest incident in Lakhimpur Kheri brought back memories of a similar crime in the state's Budaun district in 2014. At the time, two underage girls, cousins, were kidnapped, gang-raped, and hanged from a tree in Katra village of the district.