New Delhi, Oct 5 : A plea has been moved in the Supreme Court seeking imposition of President’s rule in Uttar Pradesh in the backdrop of the alleged rape of a 19-year-old Dalit woman by upper caste men in Hathras, who succumbed to her injuries last week in Safdarjung hospital in Delhi.
The plea filed by advocate C R Jaya Sukin said Uttar Pradesh ranks as the most unsafe state for women in the country and cited a string of incidents establishing gross violation of human rights in the state.
The PIL, citing the annual report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released on January 2020, said a case of rape is registered with the Uttar Pradesh police every two hours while crime against a child is reported every 90 minutes in the state. “That report claims that 4,322 cases of rape were reported in 2018, with almost 12 taking place daily and state also recorded 59,445 crimes against women with 162 being reported every day, which indicates a surge of 7 per cent in 2017, when 56,011 crimes – 153 crimes per day – were registered”, contended the PIL.
The petitioner also cited the Kafeel Khan case, saying he was thrown into jail for months after pointing out the lack of oxygen cylinders because of which many children died in a Gorakhpur hospital. “Police used ‘stun grenades’ against the ‘peacefully’ protesting students at Aligarh Muslim University, nearly 100 students were injured, 20 of them critically, during the state police’s crackdown at protesting students at the University in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, on December 15”, said the plea.
Citing the Hathras case, the petitioner said: “The victim, who belonged to the Dalit community, was raped by four men on September 14. The woman’s family told local media that they found her naked, bleeding and paralyzed with a split tongue and a broken spine in a field outside their home. She died two weeks later, on Tuesday, after battling serious injuries in a hospital in New Delhi.”
The petitioner urged the Supreme Court to issue a direction, particularly in the nature of a writ, for imposition of Article 356 of the Constitution of India in Uttar Pradesh immediately.
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