We, the undersigned students, faculty, staff and alumni of the University of Oxford, are deeply concerned by the rising cases of caste and gender-based violence in India and condemn the absolute apathy and repression with which the government has been dealing with them.
We are particularly horrified by the Hathras incident in Uttar Pradesh (UP), which is yet another heinous manifestation of systemic sexual violence and caste-based atrocities in India. We wholly condemn the repressive manner in which police and government authorities in UP have been conducting themselves in the past few weeks. Particularly, abusing and harassing the victim’s family, locking up an entire village, and restricting movement of the media, civil society and the political opposition, are all hallmarks of an authoritarian and casteist regime and antithetical to the democratic and constitutional ideals that India was founded on.
The abhorrent and hasty manner in which the UP police and administration cremated the Hathras victim in the dead of the night, against the wishes of the family, indicates a sinister design to destroy evidence while violating the dignity of the victim even in her death. The UP police’s repeated assertions that there is no evidence of rape despite a pending investigation not only betrays a premeditated attitude, but also a severe lack of understanding of the law on sexual offences and the duties of the police. Considering the current political climate and developments surrounding the Hathras case, we strongly believe that the UP government’s moves of setting up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) and transferring the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) are merely tokenistic and only stand to shield the upper-caste perpetrators of the crime.
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