Lucknow: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday lashed out at the Uttar Pradesh government over the cremation of the Hathras rape victim, accusing it of “destroying evidence”.
Taking to Twitter, the former state chief minister said cremating the rape victim under the administration’s “pressure” without the “consent” of her family was against the culture.
“This act of destroying evidence is condemnable,” he tweeted.
The BJP government not only committed a sin by doing so but also committed a crime, Akhilesh said.
Meanwhile, on Akhilesh’s directions, his party formed a 10-member panel, which will visit the victim’s village in Harthras on October 1 to enquire about the incident.
The panel includes state Legislative Council member Jaswant Singh Yadav; former state president of the party Chhatrasaba Atul Pradhan; and ex-Safai Ayog president Jugal Kishore Valmiki, SP chief spokesperson Rajendra Chowdhury said.
The 19-year-old Dalit woman, who died in a Delhi hospital a fortnight after she was gangraped in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras, was cremated in the early hours on Wednesday.
Her family alleged that the local police forced them to conduct the last rites in The dead of night.
However, police officers claimed that the cremation was carried out “as per wishes of the family”.
On September 14, the woman had gone to the fields with her mother and went missing soon after.
She was found beaten and tortured.
She was first admitted to Aligarh Muslim University’s Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital and then shifted to Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi on Monday.