New Delhi: Expressing grave concern over the handling of the case of alleged gang-rape in Hathras, over 90 top bureaucrats on Saturday wrote an open letter to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, calling the incident ‘greater travesty of justice and basic human values.’
“Just when we thought that nothing could numb our consciences and brains further, the handling of the Hathras incident by the Uttar Pradesh administration has shown that, as a nation, we are plumbing the depths of depravity and callousness in governance,” said the letter, signed by 92 retired bureaucrats, including retired IAS, IPS and IFS officers. In the letter, they stated that his actions over the past three-and-half years gave them little reason to believe that the decisions taken in this case are motivated by respect for the rule of law.
‘A case too little, too late’
“Instead of promptly admitting her to a hospital with advanced facilities for dealing with trauma, she was allowed to languish in the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital, Aligarh. She was moved to Delhi only two weeks after the incident, that too on the request of her family, a case of too little, too late,” the letter reads.
Extremely critical of the handling of the Hathras incident, they said, almost three weeks after the incident, the police are yet to confirm the rape and “are still spinning theories around it” although the video of what amounts to her dying declaration seems to confirm it. With regard to the controversial cremation of the woman by the police in the middle of the night, they said what was witnessed after her death was an ‘even greater travesty of justice and basic human values.’
The collective voiced its skepticism as it referred to reports that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked Adityanath to fast-track the case to secure an early conviction. “We may be forgiven for viewing UP’s fast track justice system with scepticism. We are, in fact, concerned with the novel interpretations of fast track justice in the state governed by you,” they wrote.
The former civil servants also came down heavily on the district administration, including the bureaucrats for their ‘meek surrender to political diktat’ and that it had shamed all of them who deem it a badge of honour to belong to these services.
“Politicians never tire of saying ‘the law must take its course’. Why depart from this article of faith for your party and government?” the bureaucrats questioned in the letter.
Among the signatories were former national security adviser (NSA) Shivshankar Menon, former health secretary Sujatha Rao, former deputy NSA Vijaya Latha Reddy, former finance secretary Narendra Sisodia, former ambassadors Navrekha Sharma and Deb Mukharji, and former Bengal DGP (Intelligence) A.K. Samanta among others.