Police prevent politicians from entering a Uttar Pradesh village where they allegedly raped and killed a Dalit woman, sparking outrage.
Indian police imposed emergency laws on Thursday in a village where a Dalit woman was allegedly raped and killed, excluding gatherings of more than five people after clashes broke out after her cremation.
Opposition leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who were heading to the Hathras district to meet with the victim’s family, were detained by the police.
The police stopped his convoy on a highway on the way to town. They got out of their car and started walking towards the village, but the police blocked them again.
Dozens of Congress party workers fought with the police, who used sticks to disperse them. Some party workers were injured and Rahul Gandhi slid to the ground in the melee before police took him away, a video showed on television news channels.
The 19-year-old, from the class formerly known as “untouchables” under India’s Hindu caste system, died of her injuries on Tuesday, after she was attacked and gang-raped on September 14 in a field near his home in the Hathras district, 100 km (62 miles) from the capital New Delhi, authorities said.
Police arrested four men in connection with the crime.
Clashes between protesters and police broke out in the district in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday after police cremated the woman’s body.
The victim’s brother told Reuters that the cremation was carried out against the wishes of his family, who had wanted to perform their own funeral rites. Local officials deny it.
A second woman died after being gang-raped in the state of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India. The two separate cases are reigniting protests over sexual violence and the country’s caste system. Both women were from the marginalized Dalit community.
25 arrested
Twenty-five people were arrested in connection with the riots, according to a police information report. A witness told Reuters that police wielded batons during the clashes.
India is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for women, with a rape that occurs every 15 minutes, according to federal data, figures that, according to human rights groups, vastly underestimate the scale of the problem.
A protester is arrested by the police during a protest in front of the Uttar Pradesh state bhavan (building) in New Delhi, following the rape and murder of the woman. [Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters]
This latest case has caused widespread outrage and protests across India due to the backgrounds of those involved.
While the victim came from the Dalit community, which faces frequent discrimination and violence, the four men arrested were all of a higher caste, his brother told Reuters.
According to human rights organizations, Dalit women are particularly vulnerable to caste-based discrimination and sexual violence.
The victim and her brother are not being identified due to laws that prohibit naming victims of sexual violence.
Orders were imposed in Hathras preventing the gathering of more than five people, Vikrant Vir, the district’s top police official, told Reuters on Thursday.
Chandrashekhar Azad, a popular Dalit politician who founded the Bhim Army to campaign for community rights, also planned to visit the district on Thursday, according to media reports.
Uttar Pradesh, ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party, ranks as one of the most unsafe states for women in the country.
Under emergency laws, the police will prevent members of political organizations from entering Hathras, Vir said.
