Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka to meet Hathras rape victim’s family today

Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and his sister and party general secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will visit the family of the 19-year-old Dalit woman, who died in a Delhi hospital on Tuesday a fortnight after she was gang-raped at Hathras in Uttar Pradesh.

The woman was cremated in the early hours of Wednesday, with her family alleging the local police forced them to conduct the last rites in the dead of the night.

A Congress leader said some members of the party’s Scheduled Castes department – Akshay Maurya, Shivram Singh, Ritu Choudhary, Pramod Kumar and Pradeep Narwal will also accompany them. Hundreds of Congress workers have started gathering at the Delhi-Noida border to accompany the two leaders, he added.

Before leaving for Hathras, Rahul Gandhi attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government over “jungle raj” in Uttar Pradesh. “The atrocities on daughters continue in UP’s jungle raj. They were not given respect when alive and now the dignity has been taken away even in death. The BJP’s slogan of ‘Beti Bachao’ is not to save girls but to hide facts and save power,” he tweeted.

On Wednesday, the Congress demanded Adityanath’s resignation over the incident. Congress president Sonia Gandhi said the people of the country are sad and angry over the gruesome incident and said the ‘Nirbhaya of Hathras’ did not die but was killed by a “cruel and insensitive” government and its administration.