Horrific details of the Dalit child’s rape and murder in a Delhi crematorium by Radhey Shyam, the priest have emerged, as has news of another child being raped in Rajasthan. However, the massive reaction, political and public, that such crimes typically evoke, are missing.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)’s Crime in India 2020 report a whopping 1.28+ lakh cases of crime against children were registered in 2020, and the number of victims was close to 1.34 lakh. According to the report, “Major crime heads under ‘Crime Against Children’ during 2020 were Kidnapping & Abduction (42.6%) and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (38.8%) including child rape.”
In 2021 one of the most horrific cases that made it to the news was that of the nine-year-old Dalit girl who was raped, killed and cremated, by the priest in charge of the cremation ground near the Delhi cantonment area on August 1, 2021. The case received social media attention when prominent leaders like Azad Samaj Party’s Chandra Shekhar Azad and Congress’s Rahul Gandhi condemned the incident. However, it was the locals who had begun the protest after the girl’s mother had brought Purana Nangal villagers to the cremation grounds on learning about her child’s death. The accused priest Radhey Shyam (55), and three others Kuldeep Singh (63), Laxmi Narayan (48), and Salim Ahmed (49), were arrested.
Now the police chargesheet filed in the case has brought forth horrific details of the crime, and put on record that the priest had sexualy molested the child on earlier occassions too. According to the Indian Express citing police chargesheet, “Radhey Shyam told police that on August 2, he spotted the girl, who, he claimed, used to visit the crematorium to drink water and sometimes bathe” adding that he had previously forced the child to give him massages, showed her pornographic content and had “touched her… in the past”.
On the fateful day, he once again “asked the girl for a massage,” and his associate Kuldeep “suggested that they sexually assault the child”. The two took turns to rape the child, who according to the police then “died due to suffocation while being sexually assaulted.” It was then that the two attackers were “rattled after she stopped breathing” and then told the parents that she died of electrocution, reported IE. The crematorium priest Shyam then allegedly told her that her “daughter’s organs would be removed during the postmortem procedure” to scare here away from complaining to the police, stated the news report, adding that the accused also allegedly “offered the child’s mother Rs 20,000 and offered to cremate the body for free.” The chargesheet stated that “the accused asked Salim to return to the crematorium and, even as the mother kept saying no, Shyam asked Narayan and Salim to prepare the pyre. Shyam took Kuldeep’s help to place the body on the pyre and set it on fire.”
Nearly two months have passed since the nine-year-old girl from the Valmiki community was sexually assaulted and forcefully cremated. The ‘rage’ seems to have dissipated, despite parallels drawn with the Hathras case that shook India last year. Meanwhile, children continue to be raped, and killed.
The latest horror has been reported from Nagaur in Rajasthan, where a seven-year-old girl was raped and killed. According to a report in the Hindustan Times, the police have arrested the 20-year-old man who was last seen with the girl by some villagers. According to the report the man, who was known to the child abducted her, took her to a secluded place and raped her. The court remanded the accused to police custody on Wednesday, stated the news report. According to the police, the child was “last seen playing near her home on Monday and when they realised she was missing, the family informed the police by 9 P.M. Her body was found in nearby fields at 3 A.M.” The man accused was the one last seen with the girl, and was arrested. According to police the accused was “drunk when he was arrested” he has been “booked for kidnap, rape and murder”. Nagaur MP Hanuman Beniwal has demanded strict action against the accused.
श्री @ashokgehlot51 जी,नागौर जिले के पादु कल्ला क्षेत्र के ग्राम केरिया माकड़ा में 7 वर्ष की मासूम की दुष्कर्म के बाद हत्या कर दी गई,आरोपी के विरुद्घ कठोरतम कानूनी कार्यवाही करने के साथ मासूम के परिजनों को 25 लाख की आर्थिक सहायता देने हेतु निर्देश जारी करावें !
— HANUMAN BENIWAL (@hanumanbeniwal) September 21, 2021
Related:
Delhi: Women’s group calls upon media to cover the ire of Nangal villagers
Delhi Cantonment rape case: AIDWA demands action against police for alleged ‘silent complicity’
Nangal village gang-rape, both gendered and caste-based violence: Civil Society Organisations