India court grants bail to two of five rape accused

An Indian court on Monday granted bail to two of five men detained earlier this year on suspicion of raping and murdering two teenage girls in a case that sparked global outrage.

The low-caste cousins, aged 12 and 14, were found hanging from a tree in an impoverished village in northern Uttar Pradesh state in May.

Presiding judge Anil Kumar granted relief to the two accused police officers after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said it could not file charges against the men, citing a lack of evidence, according to the Press Trust of India.

The men were released after spending 90 days in detention, the maximum time that a person can be held without being charged in India, on a bond of 200,000 rupees ($3,300) and on the condition that they do not tamper with evidence or threaten witnesses.

The girls were reported at the time to have been gang-raped and murdered after going into the fields to relieve themselves because their homes, like most in their village in Badaun district, lacked lavatories.

Decorated with marigolds and ribbons, 108 toilets were donated on Sunday to the village, where scared and vulnerable women had long been forced to trek nightly into the fields to relieve themselves.

The attack sparked public outrage after the family complained of police apathy towards them because they came from a lower caste.

Media reports said the CBI's decision was based on forensic tests and polygraphs that had ruled out sexual assault in the case.

India brought in tougher rape laws last year for crimes against women after the fatal gang-rape of a physiotherapy student on a bus in New Delhi in December 2012.

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