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LUCKNOW, India, Sept. 29 (Reuters): A woman from the lowest echelon of India’s caste system died in a hospital on Tuesday, weeks after authorities said she was raped by a group of men, prompting protests and criticism of the opposition for what it considered a failure. to protect women.
Her case was the latest in a series of gruesome crimes against women in India that have given her the dismal reputation of being one of the worst places in the world to be a woman.
A woman reported a rape every 15 minutes on average in India in 2018, according to the latest government data released in January.
“There is almost no protection for women. Criminals are committing crimes openly,” Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, leader of the opposition Congress party, said on Twitter.
The 19-year-old victim, from the Dalit community, was attacked and raped on September 14 in a field near her home in Hathras district, 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Delhi, authorities said.
Police arrested four men in connection with the crime.
On Monday, the woman was taken from a hospital in the state of Uttar Pradesh to Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi, where she died while receiving treatment, authorities said.
Some 300 protesters from the Bhim Army, a party that defends the rights of Dalits, entered the hospital premises and shouted slogans near the morgue where the woman’s body was kept.
“We will take the matter to a fast-track court for faster investigation and collection of evidence,” district authorities in Hathras said in a statement.
The woman’s home state of Uttar Pradesh, ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, ranks as the most unsafe state for women in the country.
Last December, a gang of men set fire to a 23-year-old Dalit woman while on her way to a court in Uttar Pradesh to press rape charges. – Reuters
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