M F AHMAD
Daltonganj, May 20: Assistant superintendent of police and SDPO Rishabha Garg on Friday reached Jogadeeh village under the Paton police station where the panchayat had harassed a 24-year-old tribal Oraon girl on May 14.
The panchayat first asked for her locks of hair to be cut short and then the girl was abandoned.
The tribal girl after losing her locks of hair and with bouts of humiliation in full public glare, took refuge in the nearby jungle whom the Paton police tracked and recovered on May 15.
Garg said, “11 people have been named accused by the victim girl in her statement. Police have caught and jailed three of them. There are many unidentified faces too who were the part of the panchayat that wreaked havoc on this poor tribal girl.”
“There were some countable numbers of locals who had opposed the decision of the panchayat to punish this girl but these saner elements and their sane voices were ignored,” added Garg.
“These people just came to the police and narrated the sequence of events,” he said. Those who figured more and more and had sat in the infamous panchayat were found absent from the village ostensibly to duck their arrest by the police.
Garg was surprised to find that the master mind behind the whole incidents was a woman and the woman is the sister-in-law (read bhabhi) of the victim girl.
“This woman has gone into hiding from day one of the incident of torture and humiliation,” he said and added that she will be arrested soon.
Asked if brothers of the victim girl played any vicious role as their parents died long ago Garg said, “One of her two brothers is said to be down with the TB. The other one is also not any worth. It is the wife of her one brother who did all unlawful things to her proxy the panchayat.”
The state human rights commission and its higher body the national human rights commission have taken cognisance of this incident and have sought detailed report from the civil and police administration of Palamu.
The victim girl who underwent medical treatment in the MMCH Daltonganj is now in a shelter home for girls and women under the Chainpur police station and she is slowly adjusting to the challenges of her life.
