Eight days after a 19-year-old Dalit woman, Chandrika Parmar, was found murdered and tied in a gunny sack from the Mahisagar river at Karanta village in Mahisagar district, the family of the victim has refused to perform the last rites until the police arrest the accused in the case. The SSG hospital in Vadodara has preserved the highly decomposed body of the woman in its cold room following a panel post-mortem, with the police attempting to counsel the family to complete the rituals. The Bakor police station in Khanpur taluka of Mahisagar district is probing the case of murder, lodged on March 21, hours after Chandrika’s highly decomposed body was recovered from a gunny sack from the Mahisagar riverbank in Karanta. The discovery of the body has since led to an outrage and several protests from the Dalit community and the family of the deceased demanding the “death penalty” for the accused. Chandrika had gone missing on March 18, when she had gone to attend a Urs fair with her cousins. The group of cousins, police said, was caught in the strong dust storm, followed by the heavy rains that had lashed the village, and thereafter, Chandrika was missing. PS Valvi, Deputy Superintendent of Police, SC ST Cell, Mahisagar, said, “We have formed three teams and are very close to cracking the case. We registered an FIR on the same day the body was found. We have been requesting the family to complete the final rites. However, the family has not been cooperating even in the investigations or paying heed to our requests as they are under the influence of some community leaders.” Valvi added that the three teams have questioned several suspects since March 21. He said, “We have questioned many people and are trying to gather more minute details from the cousins of the deceased, who were accompanying her. But we do not have their cooperation. The accused, however, are not from the family. The girl’s body was covered with a gunny sack." According to Valvi, the primary post-mortem report has not concluded the cause of her death yet. At the cold room in SSG hospital, members of the victim's community are taking turns to "guard" the hospital to ensure that the police do not exercise the power to dispose of the body. According to the Medical Superintendent of SSG, Dr Ranjan Aiyer, the protocol provides for the police to initiate action within 72 hours of conducting the post-mortem. Aiyer told this newspaper, “If the family is refusing to take the body, the police can, with permission from the Sub-Divisional Magistrate, dispose of the body by burial, cremation, or any other means of destroying the body. The hospital cannot initiate action on its own but given that the body is highly decomposed and therefore poses a threat of infection, we will take a call in the case and approach the District Magistrate if needed.”
