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Suitor attacked sisters with acid ‘after older girl spurned him’
The recent acid attack on two teenag girls in Rautahat was a result of unrequited love, police investigation has shown.Shiva Puri
The recent acid attack on two teenag girls in Rautahat was a result of unrequited love, police investigation has shown.
Police said Rambabu Paswan, 50, attacked Samjhana Das, 18, and her younger sister Sushmita Das, 15, on the night of September 12 after his proposal was spurned by the eldest sister.
The revelation was made when police went through Samjhana’s call details and found out that Rambabu had called her nearly 200 times in a month.
“Paswan was detained based on the call details, the FIR filed by the girl’s father and the statement of Samjhana,” Rautahat district police chief SP Kedar Dhakal said.
Paswan had accompanied the injured sisters and their father, Jadav Lal, to Kirtipur Hospital in Kathmandu after the incident.
He was taken into custody on Monday evening and brought back to Rautahat.
“Jilted love is the motive behind this crime, as in many acid attack cases,” SP Dhakal said.
Since Paswan had been putting on a front of a concerned neighbour from the beginning, the investigators had ruled out his involvement in the attack.
He was the first person to reach the Das residence when the girls’ mother cried out for help on the night of the incident.
Samjhana and Sushmita were then taken to District Hospital. But as their treatment was not possible in the district, the sisters were taken to the Capital.
SP Dhakal said when Paswan accompanied the two victims and their father to Kathmandu, police were still clueless about his crime.
The phone details of Samjhana gave Paswan away.
“Once we got the call details, we came to the conclusion that Paswan was the person behind the crime,” said DSP Yubaraj Khadka of Area Police Office in Chandrapur.
A specail team, comprising Police Inspector Amir Kumar Dahal and Sub-Inspector Rudra Kadel, was sent to Kathmandu to arrest Paswan.
The girls’ father, Jadav Lal, said he was astonished when he learned that Paswan had thrown acid on his daughters.
“I had always considered him to be a helpful neighbour with a good heart, but he turned out to be monster,” he said.