Sultanpur Rape Case Update – Police engages in fake disclosure to avoid public backlash?

The negligence of the police in the Nirbhaya like rape case has raised questions about conviction rates and the guarantee of justice

Image Courtesy: Navbharat Times

On September 10, a young woman was found hanging from a Eucalyptus tree in the fields of Kotwali Dehat, Baijapur, a village in the district of Sultanpur, UP. The victim was disrobed and looked brutally beaten up. A stick had been inserted in her private parts. The girl was discovered by locals who were out to work in their fields. The police were immediately alerted and today, almost 20 days after the incident, the police have gone on record to say that they have finally identified the body of the victim. This, we must remind you, had not been done by the police all this while.

A family from Dhammaur had apprised the police of their daughter having gone missing on July 1. But, according to official records, the police only registered the missing persons report on July 10. It is said that the family members identified the girl from her clothes, when in fact no clothes were found on her body at the time of the incident coming to light. No clothes had been found at the site of the incident too.

The police claims that the family had come forward and contacted them due to the picture of the victim being circulated on social media. The family accused four members of the Yadav family – DharmendraYadav, BrajeshYadav, his son Bharat Yadav and wife Rita Yadav for allegedly kidnapping the girl on July 1, when she was training at a computer center in the city. The police claim that after a thorough investigation that the girl was engaged in a love affair with DharmendraYadav. She had allegedly pressurized him for marriage and he, not being in favor of it, gruesomely murdered her.

While the police has been gung-ho about their so-called victory in this case, DainikJagran reporter Dharmendra Mishra, the first to disclose the incident and a close observer of the progress in the case has raised quite a few pertinent questions.

1. According to the police, the woman who was killed is a resident of Dhammaur. In this case, on July 10, the family filed a lawsuit against the accused at the police station. The family members had clearly written in the FIR that if the culprits were not caught, then the girl could meet with a fatal, cruel fate. According to the police, the same woman was killed on September 10 in Baijapur. If this is considered to be true, this revelation is a big failure of the police.
2. Why did the police not go after the accused named by the family since the two months of the report being filed? Why were no arrests made?
3. If the police had waited 72 hours for the post-mortem, why was there no effort made to seek out missing persons reports, if any, during the time and why was this family not called to identify the body?
4. If the family was called then, what were the reasons that the family couldn’t identify their daughter in those 20 days?
5. The victim was found completely disrobed, hung by a dupatta. How then, is the police claiming that the family identified the victim to be their daughter based on her clothes?
6. What measures did the police take to identify the victim while it waited 72 hours for the post-mortem?
7. After 9 days of the incident coming to light, was an appeal to identify the victim on social media made. Why did the police wait so long in such a sensitive matter?
8. Why did the family not come forward on seeing the reports in the newspaper or the TV when the incident was heavily covered in the local news? Would no grieving family think of contacting the police in such a case?
9. How is it that after 23 days there has been a sudden revelation of a family coming forward to identify the victim? What is the police hiding?
10. According to the claims of the police, if the accused stayed in the same area that they had kidnapped her from, why weren’t they traced and arrested?
11. According to the police, the accused are residents of a nearby village, Lambhua. Why would they then execute the crime in a nearby location seeing that they could get caught?
12. If the victim was found with multiple wounds all over her body, which is verified in the post mortem report, how then is the police claiming that there was no other crime other than strangulation?
13. Did the police find out what was the reason behind the crime? If they only wanted to kill her, why was her body mutilated so badly? Why were wounds around her private parts? How did her uterine wall tear? How can the police deny sexual harassment in this scenario?
14. Going by what the police says, the family came forward by themselves to identify the victim. This means the police has made no efforts in pursuing the case. What then is the police claiming victory for?

These questions beg to call one’s attention to the false claims of the police which they have spread to save face in front of the public and activist organizations. SP Himanshu Kumar, the investigating officer, must be able to answer these questions to prove the police’s contribution, if any, in this matter or accept the inefficiency of his efforts.

For now, the matter still remains in limbo with no arrests made.

Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) have filed a petition with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) demanding a proper investigation, bringing the victim one step closer to justice.

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