The special investigation team that visited the Hathras gang-rape-and-murder victim’s home on Wednesday and Thursday seemed keener to blame the family for the police’s lapses than listen to their complaints against the force, her father said.
The SIT, headed by state home secretary Bhagwan Swaroop, “kept asking us the same question — why we didn’t mention in our September 14 complaint that my daughter was not only thrashed and had her tongue chopped off but was also gang-raped,” the father said.
“We kept replying that we had done so in our application and don’t know why the police changed it.”
Piyush Mordia, inspector-general of police, Aligarh range, had on Wednesday confirmed that the police had initially registered a case of attempt to murder, adding the charges of molestation on September 19 and gang rape on September 22.
The family says the gang-rape charge was added under pressure of public protests. Mordia, however, had said the medical report had not confirmed gang rape and that a forensic laboratory was now examining the evidence.
The father said the three-member SIT — which included a senior police officer and a bureaucrat — hadn’t asked the family any questions on the “police’s burning of my daughter’s corpse after locking us inside our home”.
“The SIT members ignored our question why they were not taking any interest in our statements that the police had initially tried to save the accused and later traumatised us after my daughter’s body was brought to the village,” he added.
The father had had to step out of the village to meet reporters because the police had blocked the kachcha road with their cars to keep out all “outsiders”.
When the SIT first visited the family for an hour on Wednesday evening, it had “forgotten to ask some important questions because of the presence of outsiders there”, a police officer said on Thursday afternoon.
“So we have been asked to block the roads leading to the village today.”
On Wednesday, some journalists and curious onlookers had gathered outside the victim’s house while the SIT was questioning the family inside.
Four men have been arrested on the charge of gang-raping the 19-year-old Dalit victim, cutting off her tongue and breaking her spinal cord on September 14.
She died at Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital on September 29, after which the police allegedly hijacked her body and cremated it without the consent of the family, whom they locked inside their home.
On Wednesday night, the police registered cases against 145 people who had participated in a protest in Hathras town against the atrocity and the police’s lapses.
They have been charged with rioting, use of criminal force to deter public servants, rash acts to endanger human lives and damaging public property. The protesters had stoned the police in retaliation to a baton charge.
“We have formed teams to arrest those who took the law into their own hands and targeted police vehicles,” Hathras superintendent of police Vikrant Veer said.
Undeterred, protesters gathered across the district on Thursday to demand punishment for the policemen who had delayed the arrests of the four upper-caste accused.
Sweepers in Moradabad, about 100km from the victim’s village, blocked the national highway to Delhi for several hours with mounds of garbage. The victim was from their caste.
Congress workers held protests in every district of Uttar Pradesh demanding the resignation of chief minister Yogi Adityanath.
“Adityanath has failed to provide security to people. A large number of girls have been brutalised and killed in the three years of BJP rule. We want the chief minister to step down,” state Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu said.
