Shocking attack: The girls were found hanged in an orchard near their homesA fifth person has been arrested in relation to the gang-rape and murder of two cousins in northern India, police have said.
Officers made the latest arrest on Saturday amid growing criticism over a series of rapes. A police spokesman said three of the other arrested men were cousins in their 20s from an extended family, and had been charged with murder and rape, crimes punishable by death.
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There have been protests against the perceived police inaction and two officers have been arrested, with two more having been fired for failing to investigate when the father of one of the murdered girls reported them missing.
But in a country with a long history of tolerance for sexual violence, the Uttar Pradesh state’s top official mocked journalists for asking about the attack.
“Aren’t you safe? You’re not facing any danger, are you? Then why are you worried? What’s it to you?” the state’s chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav, said.
The gang-rape was the main story on Friday on India’s relentless 24-hour news stations, and included video footage of the girls’ bodies swaying from a mango tree where they were found hanged. But in the past few days, Uttar Pradesh has also been the scene of a brutal attack on the mother of a rape victim and the gang-rape of a 17-year-old girl by four men.
Uttar Pradesh is India’s most populous state, with nearly 200 million people. Official statistics say about 25,000 rapes are committed every year in India, a nation of 1.2 billion people. But activists say that the true figure is likely to be higher, as family or police often pressure women to keep quiet about sexual assaults.
This week, the Indian government said it was going to set up a “rape crisis cell” after the series of brutal sexual attacks on women.
Indian police and politicians, who for decades had done little about sexual violence, have faced growing public anger since the December 2012 gang-rape and murder of a young woman on a moving New Delhi bus, an attack that sparked national outrage.
On Friday, the former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh lashed out at the ruling government.
“There is no law and order in the state,” said Mayawati, who uses only one name. “It is the law of the jungle.”
Hours later, his successor ordered that the suspects in the killing of the cousins be tried in special fast track courts, to get around India’s notoriously slow judicial system.
The girls, who were 14 and 15, were raped in the tiny village of Katra, about 180 miles (300km) from Lucknow.
Police say they disappeared on Tuesday night after going into fields near their home to relieve themselves, because their house has no toilet.
The father of one girl went to police that night to report them missing, but he said they refused to help.
When the bodies were discovered the next day, angry villagers mounted a silent protest against the police inaction by refusing to allow the bodies to be cut down from the tree.
