Violent protests have erupted over the alleged gang rape and murder of a teenage girl in eastern India.
According to local media, the 17-year-old girl went missing on Saturday and was found dead less than a kilometre from her home in the Kalagach area of West Bengal the following morning.
Protesters said the student was abducted, gang-raped and then killed, with the rapists forcing her to consume poison.
However, West Bengal Police said nobody from the family had lodged a complaint and that the cause of death found in the autopsy was poison.
The police also tweeted that there was no marks of injury or of sexual assault.
Following the incident, villagers took to the streets to demand justice for the victim, blocking a national highway, and burning at least three police vehicles and two buses.
West Bengal Tourism Minister Goutam Deb the incident would be thoroughly investigated and the culprits would be punished as per law.
Police officers from India’s Rapid Action Force (RAF) dressed in riot gear used tear gas to try and disperse the crowds.
The highly publicised gang rape and murder of a woman in a bus in New Delhi in 2012 brought tens of thousands onto the streets across India and spurred demand for action from film stars and politicians, leading to harsher punishments and new fast-track courts.
An occurrence of rape was reported every 15 minutes on average in India in 2018, according to government data released in 2020.
Of the 34,000 reported rapes in 2018 just over 85 per cent led to charges, and 27 per cent to convictions, according to the annual crime report released by the Ministry of Home Affairs.
