Srinagar, India - Eight men accused of
involvement in the rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim
girl in India's Jammu and Kashmir state appeared in court on
Monday for the first hearing in a case that sparked nationwide
outrage and criticism of the ruling party.
The girl, from a nomadic community that roams the forests of
Kashmir, was drugged, held captive in a temple and sexually
assaulted for a week before being strangled and battered to
death with a stone in January, police said.
Public anger at the crime led to protests in cities across
India over the past few days, with outrage fuelled by support
for the accused initially shown by state government ministers
from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP).
The protests have also focused on another rape allegedly
involving a BJP lawmaker in the crime-ridden, most populous,
poor northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
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The outrage has drawn parallels with massive protests that
followed the gang rape and murder of a woman on a Delhi bus in
2012, which forced the then Congress-led government to enact
tough new rape laws including the death penalty.
Yet India has long been plagued by violence against women
and children - reported rapes climbed 60 percent from 2012 to
40,000 in 2016, and many more go unreported, especially in rural
areas.
Reports of torture, rape and murder of another child have
emerged from Modi's western home state of Gujarat.
In that case, the corpse of a girl was found near a cricket
ground in the city of Surat a week ago.
The post-mortem showed she had been tortured and sexually
assaulted before being strangled. The body had 86 injury marks,
including some inflicted to her genitalia with hard, blunt
objects, while more minor injuries suggest she had been beaten
with a stick or slapped.
Doctors estimate that the unidentified girl was about 12,
police said.
As the groundswell of revulsion grew, Modi assured the
country on Friday that the guilty would not be shielded, but he
has been criticised for failing to speak out sooner.
Before leaving for an official visit to Europe this week,
Modi received a letter from 50 former police chiefs, ambassadors
and senior civil servants upbraiding the political leadership
over its weak response.
"The bestiality and the barbarity involved in the rape and
murder of an eight-year-old child shows the depths of depravity
that we have sunk into," the former officials said.
"In post-Independence India, this is our darkest hour and we
find the response of our government, the leaders of our
political parties inadequate and feeble."
The letter went further by blaming the BJP and likeminded
right-wing Hindu groups for promoting a culture of "majoritarian
belligerence and aggression" in Jammu, and in the Uttar Pradesh
case it blasted the party for using feudal strongmen, who behave
like gangsters, to shore up its rule.
The former officials said they held no political affiliation
other than to uphold the values of India's secular constitution
that guarantees equal rights to all citizens. Some of the
signatories have spoken out in the past also against Modi's
Hindu nationalist party accusing it of whipping up hostility
towards India's 172 million Muslims.
THREATS AGAINST LAWYER
In 2012, voters ousted the Congress chief minister of Delhi
because of the fallout from the rape case. This time, Congress
was quick to realise the mood of the country, with party leader
Rahul Gandhi leading the first major protest in the capital last
week.
On Monday, Gandhi tweeted that there had been nearly 20 000
child rapes in India in 2016, and urged Modi to fast-track
prosecutions "if he is serious about providing 'justice for our
daughters'".
Though the rape and killing of the girl in Kashmir had been
known about for months, the backlash erupted after the charge
sheet giving gruesome details of the crime was filed last week.
It alleged that the attack was part of a plan to drive the
nomads out of Kathua district in Jammu, the mostly Hindu portion
of India's only Muslim-majority state.
The alleged ringleader of the campaign, retired bureaucrat
Sanji Ram, looked after a small Hindu temple where the girl had
been held and assaulted. Two of the eight on trial are police
officers who stand accused of being bribed to stifle the
investigation.
After Monday's initial hearing in Srinagar, the judge
adjourned the case until April 28 while the Supreme Court heard
a petition from the lawyer representing the victim's family to
have the trial held elsewhere due to fears for her safety.
Ahead of the trial, the lawyer said she had been threatened
with rape and death for taking up the case.
"I was threatened yesterday that ‘we will not forgive you’.
I am going to tell Supreme Court that I am in danger,” said the
lawyer, Deepika Singh Rawat, who has fought for a proper
investigation since the girl's body was found in January.
The Supreme Court also ordered security for the victim's
family after her father said he too feared for their safety.
Two ministers from the BJP, which shares power in Jammu and
Kashmir, were forced to resign after being pilloried for joining
a rally in support of the accused men.