"Butcher-like precision" in India's serial killings

INDIA: Nine Indian police officers were punished for incompetence over the serial murders of 17 people, mostly children, as forensic experts said the bodies had been sliced with "butcher-like precision".

Public anger against the police has been growing since the remains of the victims, who were kidnapped, raped and murdered, were found in the industrial suburb of Noida near New Delhi last week.

A businessman and his domestic help are in police custody and charged with the crimes, but outraged residents are accusing the police of failing to act because many of those reported missing came from poor families.

Authorities have suspended three senior police officers and sacked six policemen after holding them responsible for the killings, said Navin Chandra Bajpai, the top bureaucrat of Uttar Pradesh state, where Noida is situated.

Medical officials meanwhile released an autopsy report after examining the remains of the 17 corpses dug out so far from a filthy drain behind the businessman's stylish bungalow.

They listed 11 of the victims as young girls. "Postmortem tests reveal the bodies were cut with butcher-like precision," said surgeon Vinod Kumar, who heads Noida's largest state hospital where the closed-door autopsies were conducted.

"Whoever did it, they cut through the bones very systematically," Kumar told AFP and suggested the dismembering was carried out by either a trained individual or experts in what has been labelled the "House of Horrors".

The national government Thursday attacked the Noida police and offered a probe into the crime by its Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

"The law and order in Uttar Pradesh is bad and had the state government acted earlier, lives of so many children would not have been lost," Sriprakash Jaiswal, India's junior home minister, said.

"And if Uttar Pradesh asks for it, the centre is ready to order a CBI probe ... The idea is to put pressure on the state government to ensure the matter is probed with all seriousness," he said.

Jaiswal's offer came after India's main opposition BJP party threatened to stoke public anger in Uttar Pradesh state. "There'll be serious repercussions if the case is not handed over to the CBI," warned BJP spokesman Ajit Javadkar. The Noida killings have taken on political overtones ahead of make-or-break polls in April to the populous state's 402-seat legislature. It also sends 85 MPs to the 543-seat national parliament.

Uttar Pradesh is ruled by the opposition Samajwadi (Socialist) Party of chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, an avowed political foe of India's ruling party head Sonia Gandhi.

Yadav, rejecting offers of a CBI probe, set up a core police team to probe the grisly crime, his spokesman said. But under mounting pressure, Yadav scaled up compensation to the families of each victim from 200,000 to 500,000 rupees (11,274 dollars) after angry relatives rejected the initial offer.

On Wednesday, the federal government named a four-member panel of senior bureaucrats from various ministries to probe the role of police in the case.

New Delhi, Friday, AFP