Hathras gang rape case: woman’s family has denied UP’s police report
New Delhi:
In the case of the alleged gang rape and torture of a woman in Hathras, which has caused outrage across the country, Uttar Pradesh police say there is evidence that the victim’s family knew one of the accused.
The 20-year-old Dalit woman was assaulted by four upper caste men from her village on September 14. She died last Tuesday of horrible injuries from the attack; She had multiple fractures, spinal injuries, a broken neck, and a cut on her tongue.
UP police say call records reveal the woman’s brother was in contact with one of the four men arrested for the crime.
104 calls were made between the woman’s brother and the defendant Sandeep Thakur from October last year to March, according to police.
“The victim’s brother will be questioned based on the call records,” sources told NDTV.
The information that has emerged in the call logs is seen as driving the UP police narrative that there is more to the case than caste rivalry and that the young woman knew her alleged attackers.
To explore these details, a Special Investigation Team or SIT investigating the case has been given 10 more days. The team was due to present its report today, but was granted an extension by order of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a senior official said today.
The three-member team questioned the woman’s brother today. “I don’t know anything about the details of the call, no one from my family was talking to them. We will ask the police to release the recordings of the call if they have done so,” he said, denying UP’s police claim.
The UP police, faced with criticism for their handling of the case and accused by the woman’s family of a slow response to the initial complaint, have been challenging various facts of the case.
Hathras police say the woman’s gang rape allegation is not supported by forensic reports. Experts dispute this claim, noting that the woman’s samples were taken a week after the incident.
Public anger rose several degrees when the woman was cremated at 2:30 am by the police in the absence of her family. Her parents had pleaded with the police to allow them to take the body home and hold the funeral the next morning.
Police told the Supreme Court yesterday that night cremation was necessary due to intelligence inputs from the large-scale violence the next morning. They also say that it is not a cover-up attempt, since the autopsy had been carried out.
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