BALLABHGARH, India, (Reuters) – Police in northern India have arrested four men over allegations that they burnt alive two low-caste children, an official said yesterday, a case that triggered a street protest and drew condemnation from an opposition leader.
Authorities ruled out caste violence as a motive for the crime but India has a long history of such incidents, and the attack will feed concerns over rising intolerance after the rumour-fuelled killing of a Muslim man by a Hindu mob recently. .
Yesterday, two men carried the bodies of the dead children wrapped in white shrouds during a protest by about 1,000 people who blocked a major highway to the northern city of Agra, home to the Taj Mahal monument, and argued with police.
Police in the northern state of Haryana said a group of men killed the children, a girl of 8 months and her two-year-old brother, by setting alight gasoline poured through the windows of their home in Ballabhgarh district, about 50 km (31 miles) from the capital, New Delhi.
The parents, who hail from the bottom rungs of India’s millennia-old social hierarchy rooted in the Hindu religion, were also injured in the attack, a state police official said.
