On September 14, 2020, four “upper-caste” men – Sandeep (20), his uncle Ravi (35) and their friends Luv Kush (23) and Ramu (26) – raped a nineteen-year-old Dalit girl in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras district. They abducted her from the agricultural fields, raped and assaulted her in the most brutal manner – lacerated her tongue, broke her neck and spinal cord, and left her paralysed on all four limbs.
A little while later, her mother, who was hard of hearing, discovered her daughter in a pool of blood. But the four men, in spite of her mother’s presence, behaved in an aggressive and insolent manner. The four men belonged to the Thakur caste, an important political vote bank in Uttar Pradesh. It is the caste to which Uttar Pradesh’s Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath, belongs. Consequently, the Thakurs, many who consider themselves to be the political overlords, act with impunity in UP’s villages.
Despite being a case of rape by four Thakur men, the UP Police did not book a rape case against the accused. Initially, they lodged a case of attempt to murder and another under the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The police registered a case much later when the victim regained consciousness and gave a statement to the police.
Despite the serious injuries, the police admitted the victim to a hospital in Hathras district. Later, the police moved her to the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital in Aligarh. But as her condition began to deteriorate, she was shifted to the Safdarjung hospital in Delhi. But by then, it was too late. Within a few hours, on September 29, 2020, she died of a cardiac arrest.
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