Indian police on Thursday arrested a number of peaceful protestors in Dehli, including leaders of the opposition party, Congress. The protests were sparked as a result of a ‘low-caste’ teenager being raped and killed in India Tuesday.
The Dalit woman had died, Tuesday, as a result of injuries sustained due to the assault inflicted upon her by males of a ‘higher-caste.’ The attack had taken place in a field near her home in Hathras district, authorities had reported.
India most dangerous place on Earth for women
India is one of the world’s most dangerous places for women, with a rape occurring every 15 minutes, according to federal data. These figures, rights groups say, vastly underestimates the scale of the problem.
Indian police detained leaders of the opposition Congress party on Thursday as they tried to attend a protest sparked by the alleged gang-rape and murder of a 19yo woman pic.twitter.com/h6MT6gW0CE
— RT (@RT_com) October 2, 2020
Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi were both arrested by police. They were trying to get to the house of the woman’s family who had been raped, the Congress party had said.
Read more: Dalit teenager raped and killed by ‘upper-caste’ men in India
Video footage by ‘ANI’ news shows Rahul hassling with the police, during which he fell to the ground. Congress also said that other leaders of the party had also been detained.
Protesters and security forces had clashed in the district of northern Uttar Pradesh state on Wednesday after police cremated the woman’s body.
Protestors claim that they had been protesting peacefully before police disrupted the protests. There were clashes between protestors and the police after the police had cremated the victim’s body on Wednesday.
Read more: Caste War: Dalit nearly set ablaze by assailants
The victim’s brother said that the funeral carried out by the police had been a unilateral decision by them and the family had wished to carry out the funeral rites themselves. The local officials, however, denied this claim.
Twenty-five people have been arrested by the police, according to official numbers. The reason cited is civil unrest. According to ‘Reuters’, the police had been wielding batons.
Authorities to bar gathering of more than five people
Authorities on Thursday said they would bar gatherings of five or more people and would block politicians from the area.
The victim and her brother are not being identified due to laws against naming victims of sexual violence. The four men arrested were all from a higher caste, her brother told Reuters.
Uttar Pradesh, with a population of more than 200 million people and ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, ranks as particularly unsafe for women, especially Dalit, or ‘lower-caste’ women.
Opposition leaders have highlighted several other violent incidents in Uttar Pradesh in recent days, including allegations of a similar gang-rape of a Dalit woman in Balrampur.
GVS News Desk