After communal divide, political unity on Kathua

NEWDELHI: From Union minister VK Singh to Congress president Rahul Gandhi, politicians across political lines expressed outrage on Thursday over the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Jammu’s Kathua after allegations that there was a prolonged silence from top political leaders over the incident.

Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said that her government would bring a law that would make the death penalty mandatory in cases where minors were raped. “We will never ever let another child suffer in this way,” she said. Amid protests by the Jammu Bar Association against the handling of the case by the state police’s crime branch, Mehbooba also promised there would be no obstruction of justice.

Terming the rape and murder as an “unimaginable brutality that cannot go unpunished”, Gandhi criticised those indulging in politics over the crime. “How can anyone protect the culprits of such evil?” he asked in a tweet.

While the central Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership did not comment on the incident till Wednesday, Singh and the party’s general secretary, Ram Madhav, condemned the crime on Twitter a day later. “We have failed (her)… as humans. But she will not be denied justice,” tweeted Singh, the minister of state for external affairs.

Investigators have said that the eight-year-old girl from the Bakarwal Muslim nomadic tribe was held in a temple, drugged, repeatedly raped and then murdered to scare her community out of the village. While there have been protests across the country over the crime, counterprotests continue in Kathua by Hindu groups that say the case should be handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Though the Congress had earlier attacked the BJP’s ruling coalition with the PDP in Jammu and Kashmir for “shying away from a CBI probe” into the matter, its leaders faced flak on social media platforms on Wednesday for not speaking out about the crime.

On Thursday, Gandhi said: “Like millions of Indians my heart hurts tonight. India simply cannot continue to treat its women the way it does. Join me in a silent, peaceful, candlelight vigil at India Gate at midnight tonight to protest this violence and demand justice.”

The National Commission for Women has said the case should not be turned into a political issue.

Soon after the Congress president tweet, Madhav tweeted a portion of the resolution passed by the BJP’s Jammu and Kashmir unit on April 1. “Such crimes are anti-human and any effort to communalise them needs to be condemned unequivocally. The perpetrators of the crime must be dealt with as per the provisions of law while the innocent should neither be harassed,” it read. The Congress demanded an investigation by a sitting high court judge into the case. “Let’s be clear on it. Quite frankly, we have seen the CBI reverse cases so many times in the past. This is really something that should be investigated by a sitting judge of the high court. That’s the only way the families and the people will get confidence,” the party’s spokesperson Kapil Sibal said.