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NEW DELHI, October 3 (AFP): Five senior police officers were suspended for handling an investigation into the gang rape and murder of a 19-year-old woman that sparked outrage across India and sparked days of protests.
The seriously injured teenager from the disadvantaged Dalit caste was found in mid-September outside her village in northern India’s Uttar Pradesh state and died this week in a hospital in New Delhi.
Police arrested four high caste men on charges of gang rape and murder.
But police have faced criticism for cremating the woman’s body in the middle of the night, apparently with the help of a little gasoline, against her family’s wishes and religious custom.
A high-ranking police officer unleashed further outrage on Thursday after claiming that a forensic report and autopsy had shown the woman had not been raped.
This contradicts the statements of the victim and her mother and the reported hospital findings, while experts said the forensic test was carried out too long after the attack.
Hundreds of policemen have also barricaded the town, preventing the woman’s family from leaving, and preventing journalists and opposition politicians from speaking with them.
The family’s mobile phones were also reportedly seized.
The victim’s brother told an Indian news channel that the family feared for their lives.
The local superior court ordered the authorities to provide protection to the family.
Uttar Pradesh Prime Minister Yogi Adityanath announced on Friday night the suspension of the Hathras District Police Chief and four others.
The Hindu monk and close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi also announced that the family of the victim, the accused and the suspended police officers would undergo lie and drug tests.
On Friday night at the latest protest, around 500 people, including the capital’s prime minister and a prominent Dalit politician, gathered in central New Delhi to demand justice.
“We (women) are not free, even though India is independent,” Sanskriti, one of the women at the protest site in Delhi, told AFP.
“This is something I want to raise my voice against. And I just want all the people to come together and understand that it is time to do something about it,” he added.
The young woman’s death comes months after four men were hanged for the gang rape and murder of a student on a bus in 2012 in New Delhi, in a case that came to symbolize the epidemic of sexual violence in India.
An average of 87 rapes were reported in India every day last year, according to data from the National Bureau of Criminal Records, but a large number are believed to go unreported. – AFP
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