The Opposition demanded the resignation of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath over the rape and murder of a Dalit girl near Hathras and the alleged cremation of the victim’s body by the police without handing it over to parents.

The victim’s family members alleged that they were not allowed to get a last glimpse of her or keep the body in their house to pay homage.

The Congress said the incident must be investigated by an independent agency.

“The subject matter of the inquiry must go beyond the rape, beyond the activities of the rapists. There should be an inquiry against the gross and criminal negligence of the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Ajay Bisht, (as Adityanath was previously known) who is also the Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh. The way she was cremated, is a gross violation of human rights,” said Congress leader Sushmita Dev at a press meet here on Wednesday.

She said the way, the victim was left in a normal ward for more than six days, is a gross violation of human rights.

“For eight days, there was no FIR and when there was an FIR, look at the sections. No section of rape was included, can the Prime Minister of India tell this country that the very State from which he was elected as MP, your Chief Minister is repeatedly failing and the women of UP are being brutally murdered, killed, raped and the Prime Minister is watching,” Dev said.

‘Govt approach callous’

The Left parties too condemned the actions of the UP government. “Her death is the result of the callous approach of the government. The victim was grievously injured in the barbaric rape crime committed by four upper caste men on September 14, but the police refused to file an FIR for five days, denied the victim the immediate medical treatment which could have saved her and in the ultimate act of caste cruelty, the police cremated her body, denying the family the right to give their daughter a dignified funeral,” the CPI(M) Polit Bureau charged in a statement.

CPI general secretary D Raja said, her death is one more instance laying bare the violence of caste society. “Her death poses a deep moral question upon the Indian society which even after seven decades of the formal establishment of the modern democratic republic continues to be organised and operating through the archaic, irrational and violent caste collectives,” he said and added that tendency of the Adityanath government of subscribing to and practising the unconstitutional caste norms is clearly in tune with the RSS agenda of establishing a Hindu Rashtra .

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