Uttar Pradesh's Hathras Rape Case: Our Heads Hang In Shame

The Ram bhakts' heads should hang in shame over the brutal murder, torture and gang-rape of a 19 -year-old woman in Uttar Pradesh's Hathras. There is no stoppage to the  Adding salt to the wounds of victim's family members, the cops cremated the body at 2.AM  in her village after  her family was locked up in their home.The victim had suffered multiple fractures, paralysis and a deep gash in her tongue drawing parallels to the 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape.

What was most shocking was the  disturbing sequence of events.Visuals show the woman's family arguing with cops, relatives throwing themselves on the hood of the ambulance carrying the body and the woman's mother wailing helplessly for the cremation of her daughter. The hurried cremation at wee hours  was. apprantly, to save  skin and repel the public anger.

According to Hindu funeral customs, the body is cremated during daytime. "Even criminals are allowed dignified cremation. Here is a rape victim being cremated by police at 2:30 am without family members. Could this happen if the family was not dalit? This is a matter of national shame. Our own George Floyd moment," tweeted Yogendra Yadav .Undoubtedly, the victim was brutalized by the Yogi-run govt.

Even National Commission for Women chief Rekha Sharma has expressed her anguish tweeting, "Why the family wasn't allowed in crematiom? Why at night? "

Earlier, a three-year-old was raped in Lakhimpur Kheri disrict in first week of September. Her dead body was found in a field near her home. The girl's autopsy report confirmed the sexual assault. The shocking rape and murder of the girl was committed a few days after a 17-year-old girl was raped and murdered as she went to fill a scholarship application in the district.Her mutilated body was found near a dry pond, around 200 metres away from her village.

Woman  in India's largest state are most unsafe though they had high hopes after the saffron-clad  Yogi Adityanath took over the reign of power in U.P. However, Yogi regime is no better han the earlier govts..

Crime against women in Uttar Pradesh has increased by 20% from 2016 to 2019, says a National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) report. It's worse in 2020. The report says," on an average 11 rape and subsequently their murder are committed daily in UP.

It is worth recalling that BJP) had promised to form ‘Anti-Romeo Squads’ to ‘safeguard girls’ during assemly elecion campaigning. At a rally in Ghaziabad, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said, “goons have been sheltered that is why women feel unsafe in the state.”

One of Yogi Adityanath’s first executive decisions was to roll out ‘anti-Romeo’ squads to ‘protect the honour of women’. However, the operations of these squads had a distinct touch of moral policing as they started ‘picking up boys for questioning’, harassed couples for ‘indecency in public’, and called up the parents of youngsters to apprise them of their children’s ‘activities’.“A boy and a girl can never be friends,” a couple was told by the police in one of the reprimands in Meerut at that time.

But a year later, the BJP found itself in an awkward position after its MLA was accused of raping a 17-year-old in Unnao. The obedient  police and the state apparatus went all out  to shield Kuldeep Singh Sengar, the BJP MLA accused by the survivor.Earlier, a rape-and-kidnapping case against BJP’s leader (and former minister) Chinmayanand was dropped by the UP state police.

Amidst increasing incidence of encounters, dropping of criminal charges against the BJP’s own ministers and rising crimes against women, BJP so called Ram Rajya (rule of law) still remain an illusion.

(Chander Sharma)