25-yr-old medical student found dead in UP; doctor accused of harassment held

The body of a 25-year-old medical student was found a few kilometres away from her college on Wednesday (August 19) in Uttar Pradesh’s Agra.

According to NDTV, the police said a doctor, who was accused by the female student’s family of harassing her, has been taken into custody. The doctor worked in Jalaun city. The student had been pursuing a post-graduate degree in Agra.

The family of the student told the police that she had been missing since Tuesday (August 18) evening. A case of kidnapping was filed with the police hours before her body was found.

“The family of the woman told police that a medical officer – a doctor from Jalaun – was harassing her and had even threatened her,” NDTV quoted Babloo Kumar, a police officer from Agra, as saying.

“The student was found dead on Wednesday morning; the body has been sent for postmortem. The accused has been taken into custody. She had suffered injuries on her head and neck; the injury marks indicated struggle. We are trying to recover CCTV footage from the nearby areas,” he added.

The female medical student’s death comes amid shocking reports of several crimes against women and girl children in Uttar Pradesh over the last few weeks, triggering severe criticism from opposition parties against the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government in the state.

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi said on Monday in a Facebook post that the state government “has completely failed in providing security to women”.

“Bulandshahr, Hapur, Lakhimpur Kheri and now Gorakhpur. Such repeated incidents have proven that the Uttar Pradesh government has completely failed in providing security to women,” she wrote.

A day ago, a teenager who went missing from her village in Uttar Pradesh’s Bhadohi was found dead on Wednesday. Acccording to NDTV, the police had said the girl’s face and upper body bore burn injuries.

Last week, in what came as a gruesome incident, a 13-year-old girl was allegedly raped and killed in Lakhimpur Kheri district. Her body was found later in a sugarcane field. The girl had reportedly been strangled, her eyes were gouged out and her tongue cut, according to her father.

Furthermore, in Hapur, a six-year-old was kidnapped and raped earlier this month. Amid widespread horror over the incident, the police arrested the accused last week.

Meanwhile, on August 10, a US scholar from Bulandshahr named Sudeeksha Bhati was killed in a road accident. The girl’s family accused two bikers of harassment, which had reportedly resulted in Bhati’s accident.