TCN News
President of the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), Ahsan Khan condemned the recent Uttar Pradesh government’s mishandling of the Hathras rape case that has sparked outrage in the country.
Through an official statement, Khan expressed that “the Uttar Pradesh government led by Adityanath should be ashamed that it failed to protect the girl.” He highlighted how “this is not an isolated incident,” as another Dalit woman, aged 22, was raped few hundred miles away from Hathras and that more than 500 Dalit women were raped in UP under Adityanath regime in 2019.
IAMC’s official release came after The Wire reported that the Yogi government had denied rape and instead had ordered the girl’s family to undergo narco and polygraph test along with the perpetrators. IAMC expressed concern on the way police barricaded the village and barred leaders from meeting the 19-year-old Dalit victim’s family, showing how “insecure” Adityanath’s government is.
Khan also objected to the police action of locking the victim’s family in a room and cremating her body without their consent, resonating that the perpetrators of the brutal act belong to the same caste as Adityanath hence “giving a clue as to why his government failed to protect the girl and why he is yet to ensure swift justice in the case.” He raised questions on police response in the case and accused Adiyanath of “sanctioning police brutality” on the victim’s family to provide impunity to the state police in killing members of Muslim and lower caste in illegal encounters. Speaking about the current handling of the Hathras case, Khan concluded that “There is no distinction if the police is the protector or the oppressor of the people it is supposed to protect.”
Mohammed Jawad, national general secretary of the IAMC extended his fury over the government’s response stating that the Yogi administration is bent on “focussing less on the Hathras crime and its perpetrators and more on the alleged conspiracy to push the state into a caste turmoil.”
“It would be naive and preposterous to expect him to ensure justice,” said IAMC, demanding that the Modi government must step in to ensure justice to the aggrieved family as Yogi’s state regime “has refused to accept that the Dalit girl was raped, despite medical and legal experts confirming the crime.”