Haryana continues to deal with a law and order crisis with multiple incidents of rapes being reported over the last few days. In the past month, at least five incidents of rape (or gang-rape) have been reported in the state.
In three of these incidents, minor girls were not only raped but also brutalised by the accused.
On Tuesday, a three-year-old girl was allegedly raped by a 14-year-old boy in her colony in Hisar district following which the accused was apprehended on Wednesday. The boy, who lived in her neighbourhood, allegedly raped the girl on Tuesday when her parents, who are daily wage labourers, were away for work. The accused allegedly threatened the girl later with dire consequence and fled from the spot, she said. According to the complaint, the girl narrated the incident to her parents when they returned home.
In another case of brutal sexual assault in the state, a 50-year-old man was arrested for allegedly mutilating the private parts of a 10-year-old girl by inserting a wooden object, police said on Monday. The incident took place in an area near Pinjore and the police said that as per the complaint, the accused had not raped the girl, but assaulted her in a brutal manner.
A 15-year-old girl's half-naked body was found on 13 January near the bank of a canal in a village in Jind district days after she had gone missing from her village in Kurukshetra district. The girl was brutally assaulted, her private parts mutilated and some of the vital organs ruptured, police had said. The decomposed body of the main suspect in the case was recovered at Bateda, near the Karnal-Kurukshetra border on Tuesday night. The suspect, who was missing since the time of the crime, was known to the victim, CNN-News18 reported.
Representational image. Reuters
Hindustan Times reported that the family of the accused said that he couldn’t have committed the crime. "He couldn’t even kill a rat," they said. A Class XII student, he went to the same school as the girl, who was his two classes junior. Both came from the same village, were Dalits and even had the same tuition teachers.
On Sunday, the body of the another victim, an 11-year-old girl, was found in a village in Haryana's Panipat district. The official said she was abducted by two men on Saturday evening when she had gone out to throw garbage in the village dump yard. The police said that the two men, who lived in her neighbourhood, were arrested on Sunday. After abducting her, the accused took her to a house, where they allegedly raped and strangled her. They also burnt her clothes in a bid to destroy evidence.
In Faridabad district, a 22-year-old woman, who was returning home from work on Sunday evening, was kidnapped and gang-raped by four men in a moving car for nearly two hours, an NDTV report said.
In another incident in December, a six-year-old girl was raped and killed in Uklana area in Hisar district. Some unidentified men had allegedly abducted the girl when she was sleeping with her sister and mother at their home in a slum area. Doctors who conducted the post-mortem examination had said that the victim's intestine was ruptured during he incident.
Politicians react
The incidents have led the Congress to demand the dismissal of the Manohar Lal Khattar government in Haryana, alleging a complete breakdown of law and order in the state. A Congress delegation, led by former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, submitted a memorandum to the governor on Wednesday and sought the imposition of President's Rule in the state.
In response, Khattar urged political parties not to politicise such issues. Describing the recent incidents of violence against women as unfortunate, Khattar assured people that the government would take all measures to arrest the culprits and put them behind bars. "Such incidents are highly condemnable and we should discuss together how to avoid this kind of heinous crimes in future," Khattar said.
"Police officers have been directed to intensify patrolling in their respective areas. Apart from suspension of NGOs, three IG (Inspector General) level officers have been transferred. A number of initiatives are being taken to further improve the working of police," he said.
Senior Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala said that on an average, a rape and a murder happen in Haryana every eight hours. "I think it is time that crime prevention and crime control is taken seriously by the chief minister, who is also the home minister of the state," he said. "It is an issue about the safety of the girl child and women. People in Delhi are as much affected by the growing crime incidents in Haryana as anywhere else, so I think Government of India should also take stock of this deteriorating situation and call the chief minister and reprimand him, if necessary," Surjewala said.
Haryana BJP media in-charge Rajiv Jain on Wednesday condemned the recent incidents of gang rapes in the state and said the state government would take strict action in all these cases and ensure that the culprits got maximum punishment. Defending the BJP government on this issue, Jain pointed out that incidents of rapes, gang rapes, murders and honour killings took place regularly during the tenure of previous Congress government (2005-2014).
With inputs from agencies
Published Date: Jan 18, 2018 08:23 AM | Updated Date: Jan 18, 2018 08:23 AM
