India Won’t Stand by & Watch: Sonia Slams UP Govt on Hathras Rape

Yogi Adityanath has “no moral right to continue as chief minister,” said Priyanka Gandhi.

Asking UP CM Yogi Adityanath to resign, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said: “Instead of protecting the victim and her family, your government became complicit in depriving her of every single human right, even in death. You have no moral right to continue as chief minister.”

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter/@ArvindGunasekar, altered by The Quint)

“Is it a crime to be a girl? Is it an offence to be a poor man’s daughter?” asked Congress President Sonia Gandhi, in a video shared by her party’s official Twitter handle on Wednesday.

The body of the 19-year-old Dalit woman who was raped and murdered, allegedly by four upper caste men in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras, was allegedly ‘forcibly cremated’ by the Uttar Pradesh Police in the wee hours of Wednesday, 30 September.

She further went on to say: “Today we have lost a daughter.”

“I want to say the Nirbhaya of Hatharas hasn’t died. She has been killed — By a ruthless government, by its administration, by the neglect of the Uttar Pradesh government.”    

Sonia Gandhi

Gandhi lamented the fact that the victim’s mother was not allowed to bid her daughter a final goodbye.

Further Gandhi said: “The country is not going to stand by and watch...The country will speak up.”

“I, on behalf of the Congress Party, am asking for justice for the grieving family from Hathras,” said Gandhi.

Tweeting about the incident, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said:

“A daughter of India is raped, facts are suppressed and in the end the right of funeral is also taken away from her family. It is abusive and unjust.”   

Gandhi, in his tweet, had shared an India Today reporter’s video from when the victim’s body was being cremated. In the video the reporter can be hearing asking the police who is being cremated, to which the police categorically denied a response.

In yet another tweet, Rahul shared images from wee hours of Wednesday, when the cremation took place, and wrote:

“All this is a shameful move by the UP government to suppress the Dalits and show them their ‘place’ in the society. Our fight is against this hateful thinking.”   

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, in a series of tweets, shared that she “was on the phone with the Hathras victim’s father when he was informed that his daughter had passed away.”

She further said: “I heard him cry out in despair.”

“He had just been telling me that all he wanted was justice for his child. Last night he was robbed of the chance to take his daughter home for the last time and perform her last rites.”   

Asking UP CM Yogi Adityanath to resign, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said: ”Instead of protecting the victim and her family, your government became complicit in depriving her of every single human right, even in death. You have no moral right to continue as chief minister.”

Further, in a video, Gandhi-Vadra addressed a series of questions to UP CM Adityanath, including who ordered to burn the dead body of the victim forcefully, and why had he not acted in the 14 days since she was raped.

The body of the 19-year-old Dalit woman who was raped and murdered, allegedly by four upper caste men in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras, was allegedly ‘forcibly cremated’ by the Uttar Pradesh Police in the wee hours on Wednesday, 30 September.

Various other political figures, including former UP CM Mayawati, condemned the way the victim was cremated in the wee hours of Wednesday and asked the Supreme Court to take suo motu cognisance. Activists have also taken to Twitter to condemn the incident.