An Uttar Pradesh police team bludgeoned a 22-year-old woman to death at her home on Sunday evening and hanged her from the ceiling with a sari to make it look like suicide, her injured sister told reporters from her hospital bed on Monday.

Based on a complaint from Gunja Yadav, 18, the police have suspended a station house officer and five constables — who include two women — and booked them on culpable homicide charges.

Officers said they were waiting for a forensic (viscera) report before deciding whether murder charges should be invoked.

K. Satyanarayan, inspector-general of police (Varanasi range), said a police team had received an incorrect tip-off that alleged criminal Kanhaiya Yadav was hiding at his home in Manrajpur village, Chandauli district, and raided his home on Sunday evening.

Satyanarayan confirmed that the dead woman, Nisha Yadav aka Gudiya, and Gunja were Kanhaiya’s daughters. The police have not clarified whether anyone else was in the house.

Villagers had on Sunday night told The Telegraph that a 12-member police team had come to the house and bludgeoned Gudiya to death while beating Gunja “unconscious”. But Chandauli superintendent of police (SP) Ankur Agarwal had suggested the possibility of suicide.

On Monday, Gunja told reporters at a hospital in Sayyadraja, 25km from Manrajpur, that the police had entered the house without knocking and attacked Gudiya, who was in a ground-floor room.

“I heard the noise and rushed there. I saw them kicking and punching her and hitting her on the head with batons. Then two policewomen and two policemen took me to the first floor and started beating me,” she said.

“Later, one of them took a chair from my room and went to the ground floor. Sometime later, the police left. Although I was injured, I went to see Didi and found her hanging. There was blood in her hair. They had killed and hanged her.”

IGP Satyanarayan said: “We have suspended Udai Pratap Singh, station house officer (SHO) of Sayyadraja police station, Sanjay Singh, a constable, and four other constables. We have also registered cases against them.”

The six have been booked for voluntarily causing hurt (penal section 323), culpable homicide not amounting to murder (304) and house trespass after preparation for hurt, assault or wrongful restraint (452).

Agrawal, the SP, said the post-mortem report had been unable to identify the cause of death. “There’s an injury mark on her left jaw and scratches on her neck. A forensic investigation will throw light on the case,” he said.

Asked whether the report mentioned noose marks or head injuries, or clarified whether the victim was hanged before or after death – which should be routine findings – he evaded the questions.

An official at the Forensic Science Laboratory, Lucknow, told this newspaper on the condition of anonymity that the investigators’ request for a viscera analysis suggested they believed that “some poison was present in her body”.

The accused SHO told reporters: “We didn’t beat them and don’t know when the girl committed suicide.”

A villager, seeking anonymity, said at least one villager had filmed the initial part of the police raid with his mobile through a window before running away when the police spotted him.

He claimed Gudiya too had tried to film the police misbehaving with her, angering them and prompting a physical attack. No video appeared to have surfaced in public till late Monday evening.

A villager said that after Gudiya’s death, most of the police personnel had fled, realising a crowd was gathering outside the house. Two policemen stayed back, waiting for a vehicle to take the body away.

“Some of the villagers attacked them. Then some other villagers took them to hospital on their motorcycles,” the villager said.

Agrawal, the SP, said both policemen were out of danger and would soon lodge a case against those who had attacked them.

Gunja expressed fear that “the government will try to save the accused SHO and other policemen because we belong to a particular caste”.

Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav too brought in the caste angle, claiming: “The killer policemen belong to the caste of the chief minister (Yogi Adityanath). It’s his policy decision to attack other castemen.”

Adityanath is a Kshatriya, while Yadavs are a key Samajwadi vote bank.