Badaun rape: CBI calls off exhumation after Ganga drowns graves

BADAUN: The Central Bureau of Investigation ( CBI) on Sunday gave up its plan to exhume the bodies of the two girls allegedly raped and hanged on May 28 and said it would analyse the first postmortem conducted by doctors in Uttar Pradesh.

The agency had earlier said the report appeared "suspicious" and "bungled" and that the only woman doctor on the postmortem panel was a first-timer. The findings in the report mentioned "suggestive of rape", a term which has no meaning in medical jurisprudence.

The two girls, both teenagers and cousins, had gone missing on the night of May 27. They were found hanging from a tree the morning after.

CBI had to abandon exhumation at the Atena ghat, where the girls' graves are, on Saturday as the Ganga waters kept rising due to heavy rainfall. By evening, the graves were already under 8 feet of water. On Sunday, the team realized they would not be able to drain the water which had risen to 10 feet over the graves.

Dr Adarsh Kumar, one of the members of forensic team of CBI, said, "It will take two months for the Ganga waters to recede. We will now analyse the first postmortem. If we had conducted the second autopsy of the bodies, we would have been in a better position as we would have got additional evidences."

The CBI forensic team will now interrogate the woman doctor who conducted the first autopsy and try to gather fresh evidence, CBI sources said.

"The CBI could have exhumed the bodies much before. I want my daughter to get justice," the father of one of the victims said.

CBI blamed its medical board for the delay. "There was a delay on the part of medical board constituted by CBI which had to take a final call if there is a need of second autopsy. Despite repeated reminders, it met only on July 17 and decided to conduct second postmortem of the bodies," a source said.