ANOTHER RAPE REPORTED IN INDIA AMID PROTESTS AGAINST BRUTAL ACTS
Days after the arrest of a
lawmaker from India’s ruling party in connection with the rape of a teenager,
another case of the brutal rape and murder of a girl was reported on Sunday in
the state of Gujarat in the country’s west.
News of the incident
followed days of protests by activists, who have accused authorities of failing
to investigate attacks on women across the country. The protests have been driven
in part by the BJP lawmaker’s arrest last week for an alleged assault in the
northern state of Uttar Pradesh, which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party
governs.
Sunday’s reports
concerned an incident that took place on April 5 in the western Gujarat city of
Surat, the city’s police commissioner, Satish Sharma.
“The body was
recovered on April 6 by the side of a highway and according to a post mortem
report, the girl was sexually assaulted and murdered on April 5,” Sharma said.
He added the victim — who was 11, according to the post-mortem — has not yet
been identified and that police from Gujarat’s neighbouring states have been
asked to help trace her family.
“We have put our
best teams in place with all senior police officials. To nab the criminals we
first need to identify the body,” Sharma said.
The post-mortem
examination of the girl revealed a case of “strangulation and smothering” with
86 signs of minor injuries, including sexual assault, he said. Some of the
injuries were old.
A separate case of
gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in the divided state of
Jammu and Kashmir has also caused national anger as details emerged of how the
girl was kidnapped, drugged and held in captivity as eight Hindu men assaulted
her.
The crumpled body of
the girl who belonged to a nomadic tribe that roams Kashmir’s mountains was
found in January but the case made slow progress until activists stepped up
their campaign for an investigation.
The Surat incident
took place in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat, where he
was Chief Minister from 2001 until he took national office in 2014.
The weekend’s
protests, which echoed mass rallies against sexual violence in 2012, are piling
pressure on Modi, who faces general elections due by May 2019, and he has
promised to take action.
The United Nations
is among the international bodies that condemned the two earlier incidents.
“We are deeply
concerned about the prevalence of gender-based violence, including sexual
violence against women and girls, which we are witnessing in India,” Yuri
Afanasiev, the UN resident coordinator in India, said in a statement last week.
Protest rallies are
being staged all over India on Sunday, with Bollywood actors expected to
participate.
India’s opposition
Congress party held a midnight candle-lit vigil at India Gate in New Delhi, the
site where thousands of people protested in 2012 against a brutal gang-rape in
the capital.
India registered
about 40,000 rape cases in 2016, up from 25,000 in 2012, government data show.
Rights activists say thousands more go unreported.
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