Rape and murder of 13-year-old girl raises familiar public outcry in India
UTTAR PRADESH - The rape and murder of a 13-yearold girl in northern India has sparked fresh public outcry in the country, as it mourns the latest victim in a litany of sex attacks against women and girls. Two men from the girl’s village in Uttar Pradesh state were arrested on suspicion of murder after she was found strangled to death in a field, according to police. Additional charges of rape and gang rape were added following a postmortem.
The girl was from a Dalit family -- the lowest sub-caste in India’s Hindu caste system and formerly considered “untouchables” -- and activists said the crime reflected a climate of fear within their community, fueled by India’s Hindu nationalist government. India’s caste system was officially abolished in 1950, but the 2,000-year-old social hierarchy imposed on people by birth still exists in many aspects of life. The caste system categorizes Hindus at birth, defining their place in society, what jobs they can do and who they can marry.
A case under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act has also been filed against the two arrested men, the police said. The girl left home in Pakaria village in the Lakhimpur Kheri district on Friday afternoon for a toilet break in the nearby fields, said Sandeep Kumar, a junior officer with the Uttar Pradesh police. When she did not return, her family began searching for her and found her body in a sugarcane field, Kumar said. A post-mortem examination found the girl was raped and died of strangulation, according to Kumar. He denied her body was mutilated in any way as claimed in some local media reports. Kumar declined to comment if the crimes were committed against the girl because she was a Dalit. He said an investigation is still underway. Chandrashekhar Azad, a Dalit rights activist, said oppression against Dalits is “at a peak” under the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
(CNN)