Police personnel gather at the site where they shot dead four detained gang-rape and murder suspects in Shadnagar. — AFP photos
NEW DELHI: Indian police yesterday shot dead four detained gang-rape and murder suspects as they were re-enacting their alleged crime, prompting celebrations but also accusations of extrajudicial killings.
The men, who had been in custody for a week over the latest gruesome case of violence against women to shock India, were shot in the early morning as they tried to escape during the staged re-enactment in Hyderabad, police said.
“They were killed in crossfire. They tried to snatch weapons from the guards but were shot dead,” deputy police commissioner in the southern city Prakash Reddy told AFP.
The four were accused of gang-raping and murdering a 27-year-old veterinary doctor before setting fire to her body with petrol underneath an isolated bridge late on Nov 27.
The woman had phoned her sister saying she was scared of the men before her phone went dead.
She said police did not take her seriously when she said her sister was missing.
People gather around the site where the 27-year-old veterinarian’s body was found after she was allegedly gang-raped and murdered by four men at Shadnagar.
Like in the infamous 2012 rape and murder of a woman on a Delhi bus, the case sparked demonstrations and calls for swift and tough justice, with social media swamped with demands for them to be put to death.
Shortly after their arrest hundreds of protesters also tried to storm the Hyderabad police station where the four accused were held.
At one demonstration in Delhi, some women wielded swords while in parliament one lawmaker called for the men to be ‘lynched’ and another for rapists to be castrated.
But rights activists were aghast — police in India are often accused of using extrajudicial killings to bypass the legal process, often as a cover-up in botched investigations or to pacify public anger.
More than 33,000 rapes were reported in India in 2017, according to the latest government figures, but vast numbers go unreported, experts say, with just 32 per cent of cases ending in convictions.
A huge backlog of cases in the highly inefficient Indian criminal justice means that many victims wait years for their attackers to be convicted.
India’s last execution was in 2015 when Yakub Memon, convicted of financing bombings in Mumbai in 1993, was hanged. The men behind the 2012 Delhi bus case remain on death row.
Several hundred people flocked to the scene of the men’s deaths on Friday, setting off firecrackers to celebrate and showering police with flower petals.
The victim’s sister also welcomed the killings.
“I am happy the four accused have been killed in an encounter. This incident will set an example. I thank the police and media for their support,” the sister told local television station. — AFP