For the past 15 days officials in the missing persons department have been sifting through records from the various police stations in the district searching for the identity of a 16-year-old girl who was picked up, raped and then burnt to death by a group of five men who offered her a lift on the Meerut bypass on September 20.

``We have checked the records of the district but the effort has drawn a blank. It appears as though the girl may have been a resident of a bordering district, probably Muzzafarpur or Baghpat, but this has yet to be ascertained. As of now we have no clue of her identity,'' says Director General of Police MeerutB K Gupta

The burnt body was found in a mango orchard. Investigations revealed that the girl had been gang-raped and then burnt on a low fire. The perpetrators allegedly covered the body with dry leaves, sprinkled diesel over it and then burnt part after part, to avoid alighting a big fire as it ran the risk of getting noticed.

The girl was picked up by five youths travelling in a Tata 407 on the night of September 20 at around one am. She was standing by the highway with a polythene packet bearing an extra pair of clothes. The five, identified as Anil Singh (22), Narendra Singh (22), Sanjay (26), Jaggu (26) and Sarfaraz alias Kallu (26) were heading back home to Saroorpur, 50 km from Meerut. They had come to the town to watch a night show at a local theatre, Gulmarg, when they spotted the girl.

She reportedly asked for a lift. They picked her up and then took the vehicle to a desolate spot on the highway where they parked the vehicle, took her to the trunk portion and then raped her.

The girl fellunconscious and fearing they had killed her they took her to the orchard and attempted to destroy evidence.

Relying on the post-mortem report that stated that death had occurred between one and three in the morning, the police took down a list of all vehicles that passed through a checkpost near the orchard. They managed to zero in on three vehicles that were occupied by more than two persons. They finally caught up with the Tata 407.

Anil and Narender were traced within two days, while Sanjay and Jaggu were picked up on September 30. On interrogation they revealed to have committed the crime.

The hunt is now on for Sarfaraz, who is reported to be carrying the polythene packet bearing the girl's clothes.

``From the initial investigations conducted in the district we have not been able to gather anything. The matter was even extensively reported in the press but no one came forward. Now we are distributing pamphlets to other districts and have informed the authorities to help pitch in for the search,''says Gupta.

She was dressed in a skirt, top and sandals, according to the police. The four arrested are in judicial custody and the police are trying to get them remanded to yet another term of police custody so that they may be interrogated further.

When the town was trying to piece together the mystery of the murder, came the news that on Sunday, in Meerut's Jawaharnagar, a mob of residents lynched four persons to death. Three of them were snake-charmers and one a rope dancer. The mob of residents suspected them to be kachcha banyan gang members who had raided 12 houses in various colonies in Meerut on Friday night. A revenue official had been killed in the gang's attack.

Residents say they saw on Sunday morning ``weird-looking persons with beards and unkempt hair'' in a field. The rumour mill started working, hundreds of people gathered and the mob began beating them up.

Two ofthe snake-charmers, Kalyan Nath and Ajmer Nath, were dragged to the house of the murdered revenue official. Theywere clubbed to death in front of the house. Two others were also killed by the mob.

``We are checking their antecedents of the murdered people,'' says SSP Anil Kumar Raturi. Police teams have been sent to Delhi, Barabanki and Etawah, Raturi added.

The surviving snake-charmers told the police they they had been camping near the railway station. The police and the residents are not believing their version of the story that they were there to catch snakes.

``Instead of catching snakes in cultivated fields they should have gone to Terai jungles,'' says Raturi. He adds that they were dressed in the way criminal tribes do. ``Often these type of people recce the area in daytime in some guise,'' adds the SSP.

The surviving snake-charmers say they don't know why they were attacked. ``We were hunting for snakes,'' he said.

But residents are not convinced. ``We are still keeping vigil at night in batches,'' says Jawahar Nagar resident Om Prakash. ``We don't know when the other gang members might come to seekrevenge.'' The police have arrested 19 residents from the area for ``disturbing law and order.''