Calls for justice mount after Dalit girl’s rape in Delhi
NEW DELHI: Mounting protests over the alleged rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl in southwest Delhi took a political turn on Wednesday as Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi visited the victim’s family and the BJP accused the Opposition of politicising the tragedy.
Kejriwal ordered a magisterial inquiry into the incident, announced financial assistance of ₹10 lakh for the girl’s family and said the city government would appoint top lawyers to represent them.
In the morning, Gandhi met the parents of the girl and assured them of all help and support.
“The tears of the parents of the girl say one thing – that their daughter, who is the daughter of the nation, deserves justice. And, in this journey towards justice, I stand with them,” he tweeted in Hindi after the meeting.
The BJP accused the Opposition of politicking. “It is unfortunate that they choose to see rapes and deaths of girls in those states where they are not in power and not in the states like Punjab and Rajasthan, where they have their governments,” Union minister Anurag Thakur told reporters.
The girl, from a Dalit family, in Purani Nangal village near Delhi cantonment, was found dead by her parents in a local crematorium on Sunday night.
The accused — a 55-year-old priest and three of his associates — say the girl died of electrocution while fetching water from a cooler but the family alleges that the suspects hurriedly cremated the body after raping her. All four are in jail.
Autopsy inconclusive, protests swell
Police transferred the case to the crime branch and seized clothes worn by the four suspects on the day of the incident and sent it for forensic examination. An investigating officer said the clothes will be tested for DNA samples to ascertain if the nine-year-old was raped on the day of the incident.
The three-member medical board conducting the autopsy of the child’s body told police it will be impossible to arrive at a conclusion because only charred remains were available.
Since Sunday night, an arterial road near Delhi cantonment has been blocked by protesters from the Dalit community who accuse the police of lax action. On Wednesday, demonstrators swelled with people arriving from across the National Capital Region and towns further away, including Panipat in Haryana and Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh.