Congress demands time-bound judicial inquiry into Hathras atrocity

NEW DELHI: Congress on Wednesday demanded a time-bound judicial inquiry into the alleged gang-rape and death of the 19-year-old Dalit girl in Hathras and said the inquiry should be led by a sitting judge of the high court or the Supreme Court.
Referring to the UP government’s decision to transfer the Hathras case to CBI as a “charade” because the “political colour” of the UP government “washes out and suffuses” agencies like CBI and ED, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi slammed the Adityanath-led UP government for filing nearly 30 FIRs, some under the stringent sedition laws, against people who visited the family of the deceased girl.
Singhvi said it was “bizarre” that the accused in the case roamed free for many days, while the government responded with a “clamp down” on the victim’s family, instead of the accused. “BJP government in UP and at the Centre is...autocratic, dictatorial, authoritarian, totalitarian and tyrannical. I cannot find sufficiently strong words but, these are at least partially appropriate to describe the weird, unheard of and Kafkaesque, Orwellian reactions of the UP government after the Hathras incident,” Singhvi said.
On Wednesday, the party also released a nearly six minute video of former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra from their visit to the deceased girl’s family in Hathras. The video, which garnered close to 20,000 views in just over four hours since it was released on Rahul’s YouTube channel, shows the Congress leader interacting with members of the girl’s family and assuring them of assistance and protection. Some family members are also seen telling Rahul that they were not allowed to see the body of the deceased girl before she was cremated by the UP police.
Congress added that the Adityanath government was finding motive in everything that transpired after the tragic incident, which included blaming political parties that sought to stand up for the victim and her family, alleging conspiracy to destabilise the UP government, and a bid to incite communal and caste violence.