Badaun gangrape: Victim was in touch with accused, claims CBI

The Badaun gangrape case, in which two teen sisters were gangraped and hanged on tree, has a new twist according to the latest CBI investigations. A Hindustan Times report quotes CBI sources as saying that one of the accused Pappu Yadav and one of girls had spoken to each other, “around 300 times over their mobile phones since 2013." The report notes that Pappu and the the victim had also spoken to each other on the night the two girls went missing. “The CBI has come to these conclusions after going through call detail records of the phone numbers that the victim in question and the accused are believed to have owned,” adds the report. Currently five men have been accused of gangraping and murdering the cousin sisters. The five accused - brothers Pappu Yadav, Awadhesh Yadav and Urvesh Yadav and constables Chhatrapal Yadav and Sarvesh Yadav - have been arrested. This is not the first time the CBI has given a ’new’ twist to the story of the Badaun gangrape. Previously a CNN-IBN report had quoted CBI sources as saying that honour killing was a possibility. This was based on ‘deviations’ in the statements given by the family members. [caption id=“attachment_1627015” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The crime scene in Badaun district. Image from IBN-Live[/caption] According to a PTI, the CBI had made fathers of the rape victims, a family member and a witness undergo polygraph test at Central Forensic Science Laboratory in CGO complex in New Delhi. The earlier report had also spoken about how during the test the family members of the victims were repeatedly asked about the mobile phones of the girls and why it was broken. The CBI sources said that statements given by the family members have some inconsistencies which need to be clarified before proceeding in the case. The victims’ brother, Virendra, had alleged that CBI is harassing his family by subjecting his father to a lie-detector test. He said that the CBI was focusing on the victims rather than the accused. Where gaining new evidence is concerned, the CBI has was recently forced to call off the exhumation process for the bodies of the two victims due to the rising waters of the Ganga which submerged the graves. The CBI had ignored warnings from the irrigation department in the state, which had said that unless the exhumation was done in two days, the bodies would be submerged. With the latest twist where the CBI claims that the victim and the accused were on speaking terms, the idea that the agency is concentrating on the victims, rather than the accused, doesn’t seem so outlandish.