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Abhishek Mathur / BBC
The girl’s family has accused the police of cremating her body without her permission.
The family of a Dalit (formerly untouchable) woman who died after being gang-raped has accused police officers of cremating her body without her permission.
The 19-year-old was allegedly raped by four upper-caste men in the Hathras district of northern India.
She was seriously injured and died in a Delhi hospital on Tuesday after fighting for her life for two weeks.
Activists say that the police must explain why they made the “inhumane decision.”
His alleged attackers have been arrested and a fast track court has been established to hear the case.
Local journalist Abhishek Mathur, who witnessed the cremation from a distance, told the BBC that the police kept his family and the media away from the funeral pyre.
His body was brought to his village in the state of Uttar Pradesh around midnight. The victim’s brother said the police were pressuring the family to have her cremated immediately.
“When we refused, the body was taken away in an ambulance and cremated,” he said.
However, a senior district administration official denied the allegation and said the family’s consent was taken.
Mathur said the victim’s mother wanted to bring her body home for rituals before the last rites, but her request was denied.
“The police had formed a human chain to prevent protesting crowds, family and the media from approaching the cremation site,” he added.
The victim’s brother said that some policemen were rude to them.
“They took the body without our permission, without my parents’ permission and cremated her. We couldn’t even see her for the last time,” he said.
He further added that the police beat family members when they protested to see the body, adding that even female family members were beaten.
‘Illegal and immoral’
By Geeta Pandey, BBC News, Delhi
In India, where a rape is reported every 15 minutes, most attacks do not even make the news.
But then comes a case that stands out for its brutality and shocks the conscience of the nation.
The gang rape of the 19-year-old Dalit teenager is one of those cases that has caused great outrage.
But in this case, it is not just the attackers who have committed a heinous crime. The authorities have also treated his family with indignity, before and after his death.
Following the outrage, Hathras police have denied reports that his body was cremated without the family’s consent, but many local journalists have refuted his story.
Videos shared widely on television news channels and social media show his distraught family and villagers making various attempts to claim his body when the police ambulance arrived in the village.
In one video, his mother is seen crying with her head resting on the hood of the car. In another, she is sitting on the street in front of the ambulance, crying and beating her chest.
He has heard repeatedly pleading with officials to hand over the body so that he can take it home one last time and perform some rituals.
The victim’s father is heard telling reporters that cremations never take place overnight. But the police continued with the 2:30 am funeral.
The opposition party in Congress called the hasty cremation “a grave violation of human rights.” On social media, many have called it “illegal” and “immoral.”
Police officers have not made a statement about the allegations.
His death has sparked anger across the country. Dalit activists have closed the main market in Hathras and are demanding action against police officers.
They are also angry with the way the police handled the investigation.
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Activists in Delhi took to the streets to protest the news of the victim’s death
The victim’s brother said no arrests had been made in the first 10 days after the incident occurred. “They left her for dead. She fought for her life for 14 days,” he said.
Several opposition leaders have condemned the incident, calling it “insulting and unfair”.
Dalits are some of the most oppressed citizens of India due to a relentless Hindu caste hierarchy that condemns them at the bottom of the scale. Despite the laws that protect them, discrimination continues to be a daily reality for the Dalit population, estimated at some 200 million.
On Twitter, the victim’s death is among the main trends of discussion, with many calling it the forgotten Nirbhaya, a reference to the 2012 gang rape and murder of a woman in Delhi that shocked the world.
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The 23-year-old physiotherapy student was named Nirbhaya the Fearless by the press as she could not be named under Indian law.
Rape and sexual violence have been in the spotlight in India since the Delhi attack in 2012, which sparked large protests and changes to the country’s rape laws. But there have been no signs that crimes against women and girls are decreasing.
