Backlash grows over new rape outrages

Policemen present to the media two of the accused in the gang rape and hanging of two girls in Uttar Pradesh.

AFP/New Delhi

Outrage grew in India yesterday over two shocking rape cases as the new government said it was planning to set up a special crisis cell to ensure justice for victims of sex attacks.

On Thursday it emerged that two teenagers from a low caste had been found hanging from a tree after being gang-raped in their village.

A day later police said the father of the chief suspect in another rape case had savagely attacked the mother of his son’s alleged victim.

Rights activists and politicians said that the cases highlighted that the authorities in Uttar Pradesh were “not serious” about tackling sexual crimes.

India revised its laws on sex attacks in the wake of the December 2012 gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi which triggered outrage, but they have done little to stem the tide of sex attacks.

Police in Uttar Pradesh said yesterday that three people, including a police constable, had been arrested in connection with a sex attack on the two girls in the village of Budaun earlier this week.

The two cousins, aged 14 and 15, were found hanging from a tree on Wednesday morning, with subsequent tests showing that they had been the victim of multiple sexual assaults.

Mukul Goel, a senior police officer, said it had still not been determined whether the victims had committed suicide or been strung up as a way of silencing them after they were raped.

“Only a thorough police probe would confirm whether the girls were murdered or they committed suicide,” the officer said.

The attacks sparked anger in New Delhi, with scores of students and women’s rights activists chanting slogans such as “End This Rape Culture” and calling on the Uttar Pradesh government to quit at a protest in the capital.

The media reported that two policemen had been sacked over their handling of the case as well as carrying news of the police constable’s arrest.

But Maneka Gandhi, appointed child welfare minister by new Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this week, said that every officer who had been involved in the case should be dismissed.

“Police (are) still not acting in the right direction. All policemen involved in the incident should be terminated,” she told the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency, adding that she planned to set up a “rape crisis cell”.

Her comments came after police said that the mother of another rape victim was allegedly beaten by the father of the accused after her family refused to withdraw allegations against his son, police said yesterday.

The mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was critically ill in hospital after suffering multiple fractures, police and medics said.

The father of the accused has been arrested and police said they were still looking for several other suspects accused of taking part in the attack on the victim’s mother on May 26. According to the NDTV network, the mother was attacked in a field near the family home by five men who had already tried to pressure her into dropping the complaint.

The two incidents have been seized upon by opponents of the local government in Uttar Pradesh which is run by the socialist Samajwadi Party.

Party’s leader Mulayam Singh Yadav — whose son Akhilesh is the Uttar Pradesh chief minister — told an election rally last month that he was opposed to the death penalty for gang rapists brought in after the December 2012 bus attack, saying “boys make mistakes”.  When a reporter asked yesterday about the lawlessness of Uttar Pradesh, Akhilesh Yadav retorted: “You haven’t been harmed, have you? No, right? Great. Thank you.”