Kaithal, Haryana:
A day after Sonia Gandhi visited Haryana, yet another rape case has been reported from the state. According to reports, a 19-yar-old Dalit girl was kidnapped and gang-raped in Kaithal district on Monday. She was later dumped by the accused in her village. Her family found her in an unconscious state with her hands tied on Tuesday evening. The police have arrested two accused in the case.
14 rape cases have been reported from the Congress-ruled state in the last one month. It was this alarming number that brought the Congress president to the state yesterday, where she met the family of a Dalit girl who committed suicide after she was gang-raped over the weekend. After a brief meeting, Mrs Gandhi promised justice to the family and said, "I criticise in the strongest terms these kind of incidents. The guilty should get the severest punishment."
But her words, it seems, have failed to check the situation on the ground in Haryana, where gang-rapes continue to be reported with alarming frequency. Minutes after Mrs Gandhi exited Jind yesterday, two more rapes were reported from the state.
During her visit, Mrs Gandhi was accompanied by Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, whose response so far to the spate of crimes against women in his state has been frustrating and inadequate.
On Tuesday, the Haryana Congress chose to call the rapes a "conspiracy to malign the government." Phool Chand Mulana, who heads the state branch of the Congress, said that the spate of rapes, many of them involving Dalit minors, was being sensationalised as "a political conspiracy."
A Dalit teen was raped last month in Hisar by 12 men, and an MMS of the assault was circulated in the village. Unable to cope, her father killed himself. The victim and her mother refused to collect his body from a local hospital till a police case was registered against the attackers.
But the fact that it took his death to propel the police into registering a case of rape is a grim reflection of the condition of Dalits in the state.