On 18th March 2023, a Dalit young girl (aged 19) from Nanakhanpur in the Mahisagar district of Gujarat went missing while she had gone to a local Urs fair with her family. On 21st March 2023, her dead body was found in a river bed. The dead body was tied in a sack. This has raised suspicion of the girl being murdered. The police are investigating this matter further.
The deceased girl was appearing for her 12th standard examinations. She went to attend a Urs fair in the Karanta village in the Mahisagar district. She attended the fair with her family but while returning, she went missing. Urs fair is an annual celebration at a dargah in memory of the Muslim saint after whom that particular dargah is named. People having faith in that dargah primarily gather there for religious rituals and participate in it, while other sections of the society also join in the fair for celebrations and enjoyment.
The deceased girl had gone to the Urs mela with her family members. While returning from there, they were standing at a place where she went missing as it raining with the storm. The family started searching for her. She was not found anywhere around. Finally, the family members lodged a complaint at Khanpur police station. The police then launched an investigation and sent photos of the missing girl to the entire Mahisagar district police as well as police stations in central Gujarat, including Godhra, Dahod, Vadodara, Aravalli, and Anand.
On the evening of March 21, the Khanpur police found the body of the Dalit girl in a sack at the Mahisagar river passing through the Karanta village. A complaint was then lodged by the family at the police station. The police registered an FIR under sections 302 (murder), 365 (kidnapping), and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offense) of the IPC against the unidentified accused and started further investigation.
The FIR copy is available with OpIndia. Apart from this, our team also contacted the family members of the deceased girl, who gave more details about the matter. The deceased girl’s brother told OpIndia team about the circumstances under which his sister had gone missing. He said, “On the 18th of March, my younger sister, along with family, went to the annual Urs fair at the dargah in the Karanta village. Our family goes to this fair every year. At around 8 pm, when she was returning with her family, she was separated from the family in the crowd due to a sudden storm and rain.”
He further told that when the girl’s family members tried to trace her some people stopped them. “One of them has been identified as Mohsin”, he said. He added that when his family was looking for the girl, he had also sought the cooperation of the people around the dargah but no one helped. So in the end, he had to file a police complaint in this regard.
According to the family, the next day, they also went to Hussainbhai, the former sarpanch of Karanta village, to seek help. He stopped the family from going to search the dargah area saying that he would investigate it himself. The victim’s brother also told our team during the conversation that whenever the victim’s family used to go for a check-up in the dargah area, a crowd of locals used to gather there.
According to the victim’s brother, on the evening of the 21st of March, the Khanpur police called him and told him to identify the body of the girl tied in a sack obtained from the Mahisagar river passing through Karanta village. When the family members went and saw it, they identified the body. A complaint was later lodged in the matter and on the other hand, the police seized the body and sent it for postmortem.
The OpIndia team also contacted the cousin of the deceased girl. According to him, the deceased girl was brutally beaten up and her arm and one leg were in a broken condition as well as her eye was also damaged. The face was mutilated and the teeth were also broken to prevent the body from being identified.
It has also been claimed by the family that the girl also sustained injuries on her private parts. However, it is yet to be revealed in the investigation if she was raped. According to the victim’s family, they will meet the district collector on Thursday and submit an application seeking justice.
After this incident came to light, there is panic in the entire Mahisagar district. There is also a lot of anger in the Dalit community after the incident. The locals are demanding that the killers who brutally murdered the Dalit girl be arrested at the earliest and strict action should be taken against them.
