6 held after encounter in UPover ‘conversion bid, murder’

Bareilly: A day after local police recovered the body of an 18-year-old missing woman from Uttarakhand, a man and five of his relatives were arrested for their alleged involvement in the "abduction, rape, murder and forced conversion" case after an encounter in Lakhimpur Kheri on Friday.
The woman was allegedly abducted from Padhua in Lakhimpur Kheri district on Jan 21. An FIR was registered under BNS sections of "abduction" against 14 individuals and charges of "gang rape", "murder" and "forceful conversion" were later added following her father's complaint.
SSP (Kheri) Sankalp Sharma said, "Mohd Asif, the main accused, was arrested after an encounter in Padhua forest. He sustained a gunshot wound in his right leg. Five other accused were held thereafter, and we're questioning them."
Sharma added: "Initially, we registered an FIR for ‘abducting a woman to compel her for marriage'. We added more sections once the body was recovered. The autopsy was conducted in Dehradun, and the body was brought to Kheri on Friday."
Notably, the autopsy did not confirm the allegations of rape, and the family has now demanded a "second autopsy".
In his complaint, the woman's father stated, "My daughter was kidnapped at gunpoint and taken to Uttarakhand, where she was raped and murdered. They should get capital punishment."
The woman's body was brought to her village on Friday morning. The family has refused to cremate her and demanded that the house of the accused be razed. Police personnel were deployed in the village as a precautionary measure.