to celebrate after police personnel shot dead four detained
gang-rape and murder suspects in Shadnagar near Hyderabad, during a
demonstration in Siliguri on December 6, 2019.DIPTENDU DUTTA /
AFP
Five senior police officers have been suspended over
their handling of an investigation into the gang-rape and murder of
a 19-year-old woman that has sparked outrage across India and
triggered days of protests.
The seriously injured teenager from the disadvantaged Dalit
caste was found in mid-September outside her village in northern
India’s Uttar Pradesh state and died this week in a New Delhi
hospital.
The police have arrested four high-caste men on charges of
gang-rape and murder.
But the police have faced criticism for cremating the woman’s
body in the middle of the night — reportedly with the help of some
petrol — against the wishes of her family and religious custom.
A senior policeman on Thursday sparked further outrage after
claiming that a forensic report and an autopsy had shown that the
woman had not been raped.
This contradicts statements from the victim and her mother and
reported hospital findings, while experts said the forensic test
was carried out too long after the attack.
Hundreds of police have also barricaded the village, preventing
the woman’s family from leaving and journalists and opposition
politicians from talking to them.
The family’s mobile phones have also reportedly been seized.
The victim’s brother told one Indian news channel that the
family were scared for their lives. The local high court has
ordered authorities to provide the family protection.
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Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath late Friday
announced the suspension of the Hathras district police chief and
four others.
The Hindu monk and close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi
also announced that the victim’s family, the accused and the
suspended policemen would all undergo lie-detector and drug
tests.
On Friday evening in the latest protest, around 500 people
including the capital’s chief minister and a prominent Dalit
politician gathered in central New Delhi demanding justice.
“We (women) are not actually free, even though India is
independent,” Sanskriti, one of the women at the Delhi protest site
told AFP.
“This is something I want to raise my voice against. And I just
wish all the people get united and they understand that it is high
time to do something about it,” she added.
The young woman’s death comes months after four men were hanged
for the 2012 gang-rape and murder of a student on a bus in New
Delhi, in a case that came to symbolise India’s epidemic of sexual
violence.
An average of 87 rapes were reported in India every day last
year, according to data by the National Crime Records Bureau, but
large numbers are thought to go unreported.
-AFP
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