LUCKNOW: The Hathras police, on Wednesday, came under severe criticism from a cross section of society and faced widespread hostility at the social media as the family of the Dalit girl, 19, who died in a Delhi hospital on Tuesday subsequent to her gang rape and injuries sustained therein at Boolgarhi village, charged the district police with cremating the body forcibly.
The family of the victim charged the district police with high handedness and claimed that the victims’s body was taken away by the police past Tuesday midnight and cremated much against their wishes.
Taking the cognizance of the incident, while PM Narendra Modi spoke to UP CM Yogi Adityanath on Wednesday morning to seek strictest punishment for the perpetrators, UP government set up a three-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the incident and present the report within a week’s time.
WATCH | Hathras gang-rape victim cremated in dead of night; kin allege police did it forcibly
“No perpetrator will be spared in the case. We will take the case to fast track court to ensure speedy justice to the victim and strictest punishment for the perpetrators. The state government is standing beside the bereaved family,” said CM Yogi.
The Dalit girl was gang raped by four men on September 14. She was taken to AMU Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital in Aligarh.
As she turned critical she was shifted to Safdarjung hospital.
She was in a critical condition and on ventilator support but lost the battle of life a fortnight later on Tuesday. All the four people accused of raping the woman have been arrested.
The brother of victim claimed that the cops had forcibly taken away the dead body and his father to perform last rites. “When my father reached Hathras, he was immediately taken (to the cremation ground by the police,” said the brother of the victim.
While the body of the victim reached the village in Hathras around midnight, her cremation was allegedly done forcibly by the district police around 3 am on Wednesday.
As per the family sources of the victim, the villagers opposed the police when they were forcing to cremate the body in the middle of the night.
The passage for ambulance was blocked as the villagers claimed that they wanted to take the body of the daughter of the village to her house and perform last rites in the morning. But the administration pressured the family for cremation at the earliest.
Senior police and administration officials were also present at the crematorium in the middle of the night, an official said.
According to purported visuals from the site that surfaced on social media some of the policemen were in anti-riot gears donning body vests and helmets.
"We are unable to understand, what they want. What kind of politics is this, they are giving random statements like the woman has not been raped! We don't know what they want," said the relative who was at home with the grieving family. "They are doing all this to hush up the case."
On the contrary, the district police claimed that there was no pressure from the administration.
In a media release, the Hathras police refuted the social media posts in connection with alleged forcible cremation of the victim’s body.
The release of the police department claimed that there was no pressure on the family for cremation and that the last rites of the victim were performed by the family itself.
Hathras Superintendent of Police (SP) Vikrant Veer denied any “urgency” by police in cremation despite the fact that cremation usually do not take place in night.
He added that the cremation was done as usual after the body reached Boolgarhi village. He claimed that the situation is calm in the village, but heavy police force was deployed.
As news of her death spread, protests broke out in Delhi as well as in Hathras with all sections of society, including politicians, sports and cine stars and activists, expressing their anguish and demanding justice for her.
(With ANI, PTI Inputs)