Communal Tension In UP’s Kheri After Man Circulates Minor Girl’s Videos And She Commits Suicide

On Thursday (2 November), a minor Hindu girl in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri district committed suicide, allegedly after a man she was purportedly in a relationship with, circulated their videos online. 

As the case involves a Muslim man, Hindu organisations intervened and staged a protest. They allegedly vandalised a shop belonging to the man, following which the police used force to dispel the crowd.

Security forces have been deployed in the area.

Swarajya has accessed the police complaint given by the victim’s family to the Sampurna Nagar police station of Kheri.

It says that the victim was 17 years old. A man named Johid Akhter, son of Jahid Noor, would forcibly make sexual relations with her and record the act. 

He recently circulated the video on his Instagram account. When the girl’s family confronted Johid’s family about it, they said the girl could marry Johid as per Islamic rituals. The girl’s family did not like the suggestion and returned home. On 2 November, when the girl was alone, she hanged herself to death.

Swarajya talked over the phone to the elder sister of the girl. She said her father died two years ago, sending the family in a financial crisis. The victim, for the same reason, had quit education after completing school.

Johid, she said, lived about 300 metres away from their house. Asked if they were in a relationship, the sister said that the family came to know about their association only weeks ago when he made the videos viral following a spat between the two.

"He was pressuring my sister to marry him and she was not agreeing," the sister, who is 19 years of age, said.

The victim is survived by her mother, the elder sister and a younger brother, who is two years old.

She said her family was so poor that they would not be able to fight the court case against Johid.

Based on the family's complaint, the police filed a case against Johid and his parents under IPC sections 323, 306, 376 and 506, along with Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008, and Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021.

Kheri police released a video statement on the case.       

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