‘Yadav made life hell for women’

KANPUR: Women offered homemade ‘halwa’ and thanked the almighty after Shiv Kumar Yadav was given life imprisonment in the Uber rape case.

“He deserves to stay in jail all his life because he made life hell for women,” said a woman from his village Ram Nagar in Mainpuri, who offered sweets at the Shiv temple after the quantum of punishment was announced.

Terrified of Yadav, women in his village would change their course and avoid coming out of their houses when he was in the village.

At least eight criminal cases have been registered against him with the Elau police station. Two of these are rape cases, two molestation while the rest are related to brawls. However, villagers said the number of unreported cases against Yadav was much higher.

“He is a compulsive sex offender. He molested women in almost every house in the village,” said Kishun Singh, a farmer. “I know at least 26-27 cases that were not reported to the police.

Women feared him not just in Ram Nagar but also in adjoining villages. For the last three days, most of them had been praying that Yadav gets strict punishment. Following the complaint of a woman of this village, the Elau police had barred his entry in Ram Nagar, said GP Gautam, a police officer who acted tough against him as station house officer.

Son of a retired school principal Shiv Kumar was a spoiled kid who would bully his parents into giving him expensive gifts. A year before the Uber case, he had also molested a village girl whose parents complained to his father who scolded Yadav.

Yadav then climbed a tree demanding the girl be brought to him. He also asked his father to give him a car. Villagers recall the entire family pleaded with him for several hours before he finally decided to climb down.

Shiv Kumar’s name entered the police records in 2003 when he was 21, for molesting and assaulting a girl in Mainpuri. From that year to 2009, he was booked under the Goonda Act and for carrying illegal firearms.

His father Ram Nath Yadav and mother Ganga Shri have been in Delhi arranging legal help for their son for the last six months. They visited Ram Nagar just once during this duration. His brother and few relatives become hysterical seeing anyone associated with media.