A nine-year-old Dalit girl who was allegedly raped, murdered and forcibly cremated in Delhi’s Cantonment area on August 1 died due to suffocation during the sexual assault, the police have said, according to The Indian Express. This is the first time the cause of the girl’s death has come to light.

In its chargesheet submitted to Delhi’s Patiala House court, the police said the main accused Radhe Shyam had sexually assaulted the minor girl in the past also. The chargesheet quoted Shyam as saying that he had coerced the girl in the past to give him massages and showed her pornographic content.

Four persons – Shyam, Kuldeep Singh, Laxmi Narayan and Salim Ahmed – were arrested on August 2. While Shyam is a priest at the crematorium where the minor was assaulted, the other three men are acquaintances of the girl’s mother.

In the chargesheet, the police accused Shyam, Singh, Narayan and Ahmed of rape, wrongful confinement, murder and destruction of evidence. They have also been charged under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Prevention of Atrocities Act.

To frame the charges in the case, the police relied on disclosure statements of the accused persons, public witnesses and CCTV camera footage.

On the day of the incident, the girl had gone to the crematorium to fetch water when she was raped, said the police. They added that Shyam had put his hand on the minor’s mouth while sexually assaulting her after which the girl died of suffocation.

Accused Kuldeep Singh held the girl’s hand while she was being raped, the police told the court. The chargesheet added that Shyam and Singh took turns to rape the girl while Ahmed was sent “to buy jalebis”.

The accused had told the girl’s mother that she had died of electrocution while fetching water from a water cooler in the crematorium. However, the police told the court that there was no evidence of electrocution since there was “no electric current” in the water cooler, reported NDTV.

The chargesheet said the accused persons got “rattled after she stopped breathing”. They allegedly poured water on the girl’s body to make her parents believe that she had died due to electrocution, the police said.

The police also told the court that the accused forcibly cremated the body before the local residents intervened into the matter.

Shyam also threw a bedsheet and a mobile phone into the pyre, said the chargesheet. The bedsheet was allegedly used by the accused person while raping the girl and while the mobile phone was the one that Shyam used for watching porn, said the police.

“The accused threatened the parents of the deceased and, by taking advantage of their poverty, illiteracy and their affiliation to the oppressed section of society, they managed to oppress their thought process and forcefully cremated the deceased,” the chargesheet stated, according to The Indian Express.

The court took cognisance of the chargesheet on September 9 and listed the matter for hearing on September 29. It also issued production warrants to the four accused persons, reported The Wire.