Comrade Provash Ghosh, General Secretary, SUCI(C), has issued the following statement on brutal rape and murder incident of Hathras on 2 October 2020.
Within eight years of the bestial Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case in Delhi which shook the conscience of the entire country and after the harrowing Unnao rape case of 2017 in which a former legislator of the ruling BJP was found to be the offender, the whole nation has now been stirred once more by another gruesome incident. A 19-year old girl belonging to the underprivileged dalit community from Hathras in Uttar Pradesh was dragged into the field, gang raped, brutally tortured, strangled, brutalised and inflicted cervical spine injury on 14 September by four arch criminals belonging to the “upper-caste” section infamous for repressing, harassing and persecuting the poor backward populace by flaunting their so called ‘caste supremacy’ and flexing muscle. The innocent victim had succumbed to her injury on 29 September. What is more, the state police, in an obvious bid to hush up evidence and truth, deviously burnt the dead body pouring kerosene in the wee hours of night after locking the victim’s distraught family inside their house.
Though the BJP-led UP government, under pressure of people’s wrath, formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) and took the alleged culprits in custody, the real intention of the BJP government did no more remain shielded when the “final diagnosis” reportedly based on forensic report of the viscera was found to have no mention of rape but only a reference to tears in the private parts. The forensic report certified the death to be due to “injury to the cervical spine by indirect blunt trauma” overruling the earlier autopsy report that confirmed “rape and strangulation”. Clearly, the state government headed by a saffron-clad self-declared monk, has trampled underfoot the barest precepts of democratic conduct and bared its most inhuman and uncouth face to once more to lend credence to the latest NCRB report that UP has been the topper in crimes against women by recording an increase of 20% from 2016 to 2019 in such offences.
While vehemently condemning such an atrocious crime with the entire administration in league, we call upon the countrymen to launch a powerful united movement demanding exemplary punishment of the culprits and immediate effective step to contain the growing bestial crime against women.
