The Lucknow court of the Allahabad High Court summoned senior Uttar Pradesh government and police officials on Thursday to assess their handling of the Hathras gang rape case. In an 11-page warrant that was based on the report of the 19-year-old’s cremation after midnight, the superior court said it is taking cognizance of the suo moto case since the alleged incidents that took place after the victim’s death. on September 29. that led to its creation “have shocked our conscience.”
Judges Jaspreet Singh and Rajan Roy also summoned the relatives of the Dalit woman who was allegedly gang-raped on the night of September 14 and later succumbed to injuries on September 29 in Delhi. The judges ordered the State to ensure that “no one exerts coercion, influence or pressure on the relatives of the deceased in any way.”
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The court has asked the state government to respond by October 12 when it will hear from officials and the woman’s family.
The judges referred to various media reports echoing the family’s allegations that the UP police had hastily completed the young woman’s cremation, allegedly without the consent of her family to emphasize that a person deceased must be respected by the State.
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“The State must respect the deceased person by allowing the body of the person to be treated with dignity and, unless necessary for the purposes of classifying a crime, knowing the cause of death and being subjected to an autopsy or for any scientific investigation , education or to save the life of another person in accordance with the law, the preservation of the corpse and the disposition in accordance with human dignity ”, he observed.
“We are inclined to examine whether there has been a serious violation of the fundamental rights of the deceased victim and of the victim’s next of kin; if the state authorities have acted in an oppressive, arbitrary and illegal way to violate such rights, ”the court said.
If the reports are true, then it will be a case of “serious violation of basic human and fundamental rights,” the court noted.
“Death must be so beautiful … Forget time, forget life, be at peace,” said the court remembering Oscar Wilde. “But in this case, the victim was treated with extreme brutality by the perpetrators of the crime and what is alleged to have happened next, if true, amounts to perpetuating the family’s misery and adding salt to their wounds,” he said.
After the incident sparked outrage across the country, Uttar Pradesh Deputy Director General (Law & Order) Prashant Kumar denied that the body was cremated without the family’s consent. “They were present during the funeral. The body was rotting. The victim died yesterday in Delhi. After the autopsy, the funeral was carried out with the consent of the family members, ”Kumar said Wednesday.
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