Priyanka Gandhi Vadra attended the prayer meeting in Delhi.
New Delhi:
Congressional leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra attended a prayer meeting at Delhi’s Valmiki Temple on Friday set amid national outrage over the alleged rape and murder of a 20-year-old Dalit woman in Hathras of Uttar Pradesh.
“We will guarantee justice for our sister. We will not sit in silence until she receives justice,” he said, addressing a crowd of congressional supporters and members of the Valmiki community who organized the event.
“The government did not help at all. His family feels powerless. We are going to put political pressure on the government. They did not even give him a cremation following Hindu customs,” Ms Vadra said.
The opposition party has been at the forefront of demonstrations against the incident that has put Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP, who rules in the center and the UP, on the receiving end of growing public outrage.
On Thursday, Ms Vadra and her brother Rahul Gandhi were briefly detained while trying to visit the village, about 200 km from Delhi, where the young woman was savagely attacked and then spent two weeks in hospital before dying. She was hastily cremated Tuesday night by police who feared mounting protests.
Television footage showed Rahul Gandhi jostling with the police before falling to the ground. After demonstrations in the area on Wednesday, authorities said they had banned gatherings of five or more people and would block politicians in the area.
Ms Vadra continued her attack the previous Friday against the Uttar Pradesh government over the incident and the late night stealth cremation by the police while greeting the Allahabad High Court summons to senior state government officials and the police.
“The entire nation is demanding justice for the victim of the rape of Hathras. The HC order sheds a ray of hope amid the dark, inhuman and unfair treatment that the UP government has given his family,” tweeted the Secretary General of Congress, calling it “strong and encouraging order.”
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