NEW DELHI: More witnesses have now forward to recount the series of events preceding the brutal broad daylight murder of 19 year old Meenakshi by her own neighbors on Thursday. Her aunt and a couple of more eyewitnesses said that the brothers stabbed the girl while their mother clutched the girl’s hair and her hands.

Kamlesh, the aunt of the murdered, said, “I was present at the crime scene when the incident occurred. The mother of the accused had clutched the victim’s hands and even her hair. She is the one who instigated her sons to commit the crime. Why hasn’t she been arrested till now? I had been telling the police that I was present at the spot, but they paid no heed to me. Today, I wrote down my statement in a letter and later the police took cognizance of it, “to Indian express.

While another man, a resident of Badarpur in South Delhi told media channels that he too was present at the time of the incident and was standing with the accused. The accused, he recalled, had said to him just before the act of murder that “I will make a mess of that girl.” After that the two accused brothers, Jaiprakash alias Sunny and Illu stabbed the girl in the back first then many times after also slitting her throat as she was coming back to her house with two bags of grocery-all in the presence of 50 odd onlookers.

The victim and her family, residents of Anand Parbat area of central Delhi, had a constant feud with the assailants family—the mother, Shashi and two brothers. It started in 2013 when the duo manhandled Meenakshi and hurled abuses at her and her mother over some petty issue. Shashi and her sons are said to be mischievous characters of her area and always found some issue to pick a fight over.

According to the FIR lodged back then the girl had accused the brothers of raping her. She also received constant threats of an acid attack on her from them.

One of the media garbs showed accused wailing as they were being taken to the judicial custody, all the while telling their part of the story. “She constantly picked on us and threatened us with a rape case. She threatened to ruin our lives,” they said.

Meanwhile, amid protests from the colony residents and some of AAP supporters outside the police station for their laxity, Delhi CM Arvind kejriwal visited the victim’s family and promised them a compensation of Rs. five lakhs.

Meenakshi had just started going to her new job at a Vodafone call centre in Shastri Nagar and had an appendix operation recently, which made the assault more fatal.