Five men were apprehended last night, while a sixth was still on the run and was shot in the leg in an encounter before being apprehended.
Digital Desk: After an encounter in which the police shot one of the key suspects in the rape and murder of two teenage girls in Lakhimpur Kheri in the right leg, the suspect was taken into custody this morning.
In a video, the police are seen carrying an injured Junaid out of a field as he limps and receives assistance from two officers.
Police claimed that Junaid, the last of the six men detained, was one of the two who persuaded the girls to ride along on their motorcycles since they were friends.
According to the girls' relatives, there was no such friendship and they had been abducted. The dead were discovered yesterday close to their village, hanging from a tree.
According to the authorities, a man by the name of Chhotu had introduced the females to Junaid and Sohail. "They were taken by these two men to a sugarcane farm today, where they were raped. They became furious when the girls asserted they would now have to get married to them. They killed the females by strangling them, assisted by Hafizul. They then summoned Karimuddin and Arif, who assisted them in hanging the girls to make it appear as though they had committed suicide "Sanjeev Suman, head of the local police, claimed.
While Chhotu is from the victims' neighbourhood, the other five are from a nearby village. "With these six arrests, all those implicated have been apprehended," claimed the police chief.
The girls' father has pleaded for the death penalty. The state's BJP government has pledged "such action that the souls of their coming generations will shudder" if the case is tried in a fast-track court.
The opposition, including the BSP and the Samajwadi Party, cited other examples and called this crime the "latest proof of how law and order has collapsed" in Uttar Pradesh.
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