Updated: September 30, 2020 5:52:11 am
Police remove the father and brother of the 19-year-old Hathras victim from Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi after persuading them to end a dharna on Tuesday. (Express photo: Tashi Tobgyal)
The body of the 19-year-old Dalit woman who was raped and killed, allegedly by four upper-caste men in Hathras of Uttar Pradesh, was cremated shortly after 3 a.m. Wednesday, and her family said police had carried out the last rites by force in the late afternoon. night even though they wanted to bring her body home one last time.
“It seems my sister has been cremated; the police don’t tell us anything. We begged them to let us take her body inside the house one last time, but they didn’t listen to us, ”the woman’s brother told The Indian Express at 3.30 am on Wednesday.
The woman had died in Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital on Tuesday, two weeks after she was attacked while helping her mother in the field. Around midnight, her body arrived at her village in Hathras in an ambulance.
At one in the morning, one of the victim’s brothers, who was in town, told The Indian Express: “The ambulance is on the main road; The police won’t let us take the body into the house. They have turned on the lights of the crematorium and are forcing us to perform their last rites right now. We don’t want to incinerate her in the middle of the night; we want to take her home. “
Read | Hathras gangrape: ‘My daughter said she wanted to go home … She was conscious again, I thought she would survive’
At the time, he said that his father and brother had not yet come home from Delhi. “What’s the rush? Our father hasn’t even come home, ”he had said.
Two hours later, videos and photos from the village showed a lone pyre and no relatives near it. At 3.30 am, her brother alleged: “The police began to be aggressive when we refused to incinerate her. When my relatives tried to see what the police were doing, they kicked us and broke one of our family member’s bracelets. Out of fear, we have locked ourselves away. Why are they doing this? “
The videos also showed the victim’s mother pleading with police officers to allow the body to be taken home one last time.
Prem Prakash Meena, the joint magistrate of Hathras, meanwhile, told ANI: “The last rites of the victim have been performed. The police and the administration will ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice. “
At 2.16am, the Hathras police tweeted that the cremation will be done “according to the wishes of the family.”
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