The leader of India's Uttar Pradesh state has asked federal police to investigate the brutal gang-rape and murder of two girls found hanging from a mango tree, amid mounting public anger over their deaths.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav requested a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the killings of the two low-caste cousins.
Yadav's call came as police said five men were arrested over the gang-rape and murder of the girls, thought to be 14 and 15, in Katra Shahadatganj, Uttar Pradesh, in northern India.
However, the families of the girls said earlier they had no faith in the impartiality of local police.
Preliminary murder and gang-rape charges were filed against three men while two policemen face accusations of being criminal accessories, Badaun district police superintendent Atul Saxena told AFP.
"Rape of both girls has been confirmed. Cause of death was asphyxia," he said.
"These men (accused of murder) first raped the victims and then hanged them," Saxena said.
The farm-labouring relatives of the cousins told AFP police could have "saved" the girls but refused to help because they were low caste.
"She was my everything, my world - and now my world has come to an end," the grief-stricken father of one victim said.
The alleged attackers were from a higher caste than the girls.
"These policemen didn't act for hours when they could have saved two young lives. Why is caste everything?" asked the father, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
Separately, Stephane Dujjaric, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman, called the killings a "horrendous crime".
"The incident underscores the wave of violence that is being seen against women whether in India, Pakistan or gender-based violence in general," Dujjaric told the Press Trust of India.
According to Indian government statistics, a rape occurs every 22 minutes but activists say the figure is conservative as many rapes go unreported in the nation of 1.2 billion.
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