Girl found dead at resort in Uttarkashi, kin cry foul

UTTARKASHI: An 18-year-old girl, who had been working for the past year at a homestay as a babysitter purportedly attending to the owner's child, was found hanging inside a staff room in Kaflon village of Assi Ganga Valley in Uttarkashi district on Friday. Police said that the homestay owner had informed them and her family about the incident.

The girl's family, however, alleged that she was murdered before being hanged from the ceiling as "her feet were touching the ground." Her kin also refused to cremate the body until they got justice.

The teenager's mysterious death at the homestay comes after a year when the death of another girl, who used to work as a receptionist in a Rishikesh resort, shook Uttarakhand. In that incident, the 19-year-old receptionist was found dead nearly a week after she went "missing." Her body was fished out of a canal near Rishikesh, and it was revealed in the probe that the resort owner had put pressure on her "to provide special service to clients."

The girl's family staged a protest along with villagers at the district hospital and demanded that the postmortem report be made public. They alleged that she was murdered. tnn