Outrage grows over rapes in India
OUTRAGE grew in India 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, the 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 the cases highlighted that the authorities in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh were “not serious” about tackling sexual crimes.
India revised its laws on sex attacks in the wake of the
Only a thorough police probe would confirm whether the girls were murdered
December 2012 gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi that triggered outrage, but they have done little to stem the tide of sexual assaults.
The police in Uttar Pradesh said that five men, 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 mango tree on Wednesday morning. Subsequent tests showed that they had been the victims 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,” he said.
The attacks sparked anger in New Delhi, where scores of students and women’s rights activists chanted slogans such as “End This Rape Culture” and called on the Uttar Pradesh government to quit.
The protests came as the police said the mother of another rape victim was allegedly badly beaten by the father of the accused, after her family refused to withdraw the allegations against his son. The father of the accused has been arrested.
The two incidents have been seized upon by opponents of the local government in Uttar Pradesh, which is run by the socialist Samajwadi Party.
The party’s leader, Mulayam Singh Yadav, 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”.
Amnesty International said the gang rape of the cousins showed that women from lower castes “face multiple levels of discrimination and violence” despite “the existence of constitutional safeguards and special laws”.
There is a long history of women and girls from India’s lower castes— especially those belonging to the Dalit caste, who were previously known as “untouchables” — of being sexually abused by people from higher castes.