NEW DELHI/HYDERABAD: Police were searching villages in western India yesterday for suspects in the rape and killing of three young sisters, as Indians still angry over the fatal gang rape of a woman on a New Delhi bus in December face another heinous sexual attack.
The bodies of the sisters — aged 7, 9 and 11 — were found Feb. 16 in a village well in Bhandara district in Maharashtra after they had gone missing from school two days earlier, said police officer Abhinav Deshmukh. The area is more than 1,000 km (630 miles) south of New Delhi, the capital.
The victims' mother said police did not take the case seriously and did nothing for several days until villagers held protests.
Deshmukh said yesterday that 10 teams of 30 investigators were working on the case and that he was confident they would find the killers soon.
Police first dismissed the deaths as accidental, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. The girls' mother accused police of a shoddy investigation and said they did nothing for two days. Enraged villagers forced shops to close, burned tires and blocked a national highway passing in the area for hours earlier this week, demanding justice. Police eventually registered a case of rape and murder after a post-mortem of the girls found that they had been sexually abused and brutally killed, PTI said.
One police officer has been suspended for not acting promptly, Indian Heavy Industries Minister Praful Patel, who represents Bhandara district in Parliament, said Thursday.
Cabinet Minister Manish Tewari called the killings a "very, very heinous assault" and said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was sending 1 million rupees ($ 18,300) to the girls' family.
Cops look for evidence in bomb attack
Indian police are investigating whether a shadowy Islamic militant group was responsible for a dual bomb attack that killed 16 people outside a movie theater and a bus station in the southern city of Hyderabad, a police official said yesterday.
The group, the Indian Mujahideen, is thought to have links with militants in neighboring Pakistan. India's recent execution of a militant is being examined as a possible motive for the bombings, said the official, an investigator who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to reveal details of the probe. Police have not detained anyone in connection with Thursday evening's attacks, the first major terror bombings in India since 2011.
