UP cousins burnt with tongs, fed human excreta for friendship with boys

Two minor cousins in Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur were repeatedly burnt with tongs and made to eat human excreta by their family members upset with their association with two boys who studied with them in the same school.

The victims revealed their ordeal to the police and members of the Child Welfare Committee after they were brought back to the town on Tuesday night from bordering Nepal, where they had fled to escape torture.

The cousins, who had burn injuries on their hands, were presented before the Child Welfare Committee after they refused to go back home with family members.

Sources said Gorakhpur Police had sent their family to Nepal to bring the girls back, but a call by a Nepali non-governmental organisation to city-based NGO Manav Seva Sansthan and timely action by the latter saved the girls from being handed over again to them.

“The victims told us that they were burnt with tongs and force-fed human excreta, for which investigation is underway. One SI with a team of the NGO brought them back to Gorakhpur from Nepal,” Pipiganj’s station house officer Dinesh Mishra said.

For now, the victims have been sent to a shelter on the instructions of the committee till a further course of action, police said.