Badaun case: Politicians line up for photo ops as victims' kin suffer in UP

May 31: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi with women of Katra Saadatganj village. June 1: BSP chief Mayawati consoles parents of the girlsFor years, its inhabitants wereforced to negotiate its prepos-terously potholed back lanes.Finally, the residents of Katra Saadatganj, a nondescript village at the southernmost end of Badaun district in Uttar Pradesh, have a helipad. Just in time for politicians of every hue who have come to meet the grieving family of two young girls, cousins aged 12 and 14, who were gangraped and murdered on May 27 night when they went out to the fields to relieve themselves.Rahul Gandhi showed up on May 31, the privately chartered helicopter that ferried him to his condolence-visitcum-photo-opportunity with the victims' families, landing on the hastily constructed helipad not 50 feet from the tall mango tree from which the girls were found hanging the morning after they were brutalised.Bearing an appropriately solemn expression, the Congress vice-president spent all of 20 minutes articulating his disdain for Uttar Pradesh's Akhilesh Yadav government and assuring the girls' parents that they would get justice. "Mai aap logon ko nyay dilaaoonga (I will get you justice)," he said to them before inspecting the 'crime scene' and taking off for Delhi.Twenty-four hours later, perhaps inspired by the Gandhi scion's unscheduled stopover as well as the opportunity to reclaim her constituency, the state's Dalits and backward castes, Mayawati also made the journey to join the mourners in Saadatganj. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief, who almost never ventured to visit victims even when she was last chief minister of Uttar Pradesh from 2007 to 2012, seemed perversely delighted that Sohan Lal, 35, and his brother Jeevan Lal, 30, whose daughters were raped and killed by Yadavs, had spurned Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's offer to compensate the family members with Rs 5 lakh each."Mujhe achha laga aur isi baat ko sun kar maine aapse milne ka iraada kiya (I liked that and that is why I decided to meet you)," she told the grieving parents, who belong to the Shakya backward caste. Mayawati offered to replace the CM's compensation offer from the BSP's own coffers. She insisted that the money was being given as "madad (assistance)" to help the families fight what was sure to be a long legal battle for justice. Mayawati, who counts the Shakya community among her 'unwavering' vote bank, also performed a solemn parikrama (walk) around the mango tree where the girls were found hanging, followed by an impromptu press conference under its shade. Conveniently positioned OB vans representing virtually every local and national TV network and crowds of curious villagers mostly there to witness the landing and taking off of helicopters, reminded her perhaps of more powerful times.June 1: Former Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar meets the family. June 2: LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan and his MP-son Chirag Paswan with the familyFormer Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar made a relatively quieter journey on June 1. A day later, Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan, visibly swelling after the success of his pre-poll alliance with BJP and more recent appointment to the Narendra Modi Cabinet, arrived amid befitting fanfare with his first-time MP-son Chirag Paswan. Father and son spent a suitable amount of time condoling with Sohan Lal and his younger brother inside their shabby brick house. Later, they too proceeded to a spot examination of the mango tree and a chat with TV crews waiting for soundbites. Chirag reminded them of Mulayam Singh Yadav's 'boys-will-be-boys-and-makemistakes' poll campaign gaffe, insisting that there was "little hope of stern action or justice" from the government headed by his son.As if on cue, Akhilesh Yadav sought to underplay the focus on Saadatganj and the subsequent spurt in crimes against women. "Only people with vested interests want to focus on the incidents in Uttar Pradesh. Rapes don't happen here alone," he told reporters in Lucknow on June 3, incredulously advising them to "use Google to see the real picture in the rest of the country".The Chief Minister refuses to be drawn in on specific instances, including the rape and murder of a 20-yearold woman, her body doused with acid and then set on fire in a village near Bareilly on May 30. On June 2 night two men attempted to rape a woman judge after they forced their way into her official residence in Aligarh. The state reported over a dozen incidents of rape in the week since the Badaun incident on May 27. But increasingly intolerant like his counterpart in West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav is unwilling to accept tha there is a problem in the state he rules.Uttar Pradesh ranks among the top offenders when it comes to crimes against women and children in India. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, the state accounted for nearly 8 per cent (1,963) of the 24,157 rape incidents involving women and children reported across India in 2012. Madhya Pradesh, however, reported the highest number of rapes-3,425 cases. But Ashish Kumar Gupta, who heads the UP Police's Special Task Force, says, "National Crime Records Bureau grossly under-reports crimes against women in Uttar Pradesh." According to him, on an average there are at least 10 rapes every single day in the state. It's been a bewildering week for the mourning families in Saadatganj. Yet to comprehend fully the loss of not one but two daughters, their grief has been rather rudely interrupted and their meagre tenement-all three rooms occupying less than 1,000 square feet in the centre of the village-completely overrun by fat-cat politicians and their ubiquitous hangers-on.There's been a minor swarm of 'lesser' leaders as well, from the local, Dadarganj legislator Sinod Shakya to BSP's state spokesman Swami Prasad Maurya and the recently elected BJP MP Dharmendra Kashyap. The Samajwadi Party's Lok Sabha member from Badaun, Dharmendra Yadav, showed up just an hour before the BSP chief on June 1, carrying Akhilesh's request asking the families to reconsider his compensation offer.Sohan Lal turned him down. "We want justice, not compensation," the distraught father told the MP, insisting that justice would be served only when the culprits "are hanged from the very mango tree" used to snuff the life out of his daughter and niece. They were cousins and also best friends. "She wanted to be a doctor," says Sunita, 35, the older girl's mother. Brighter than all the boys in her class at the local middle school in Saadatganj, Sohan Lal and his wife shared their daughter's dream and were preparing to send her to study further at the high school in nearby Usait town."She would still be alive if they had acted in time," says the mother, her grief giving way to anger as she recalls the lethargic and plainly complicit response of the constables at the local police chowki (post) when they were first informed about the missing girls. Ram Babu, the victims' 27-year-old uncle, was out watering his two-bigha farm on the fateful night when he heard screams. Running to investigate, he saw four men, among whom he recognised Pappu Yadav, son of a farmer, dragging the girls by their hair. "They threatened me with a country-made pistol," he says.Parents of the two girlsLater when he accompanied thegirls' parents to the chowki, the policemen present told them to go back home and wait for their daughters to return. "The police were clearly unwilling to help," says Sohan Lal, giving in to tears of utter helplessness. At the chowki, he claims, he heard one of the constables, Sarvesh Yadav, actually advising the main accused, Pappu Yadav, to eliminate the girls. "Rapists face a tough time in jail but murderers are feared and respected," he allegedly told the accused. Five hours later, both cousins were discovered hanging on the edge of a mango orchard barely 200 metres from their home.Incredulously, the families were led to the dead girls by none other than Sarvesh Yadav. "Aam ke baag mein dekh lo. Kahin tumhari ladkiyan wahan latak to nahin rahi (Look in the mango grove. Maybe your girls are hanging there)," said the constable told Sohan Lal and his family on May 28 morning. Villagers believe the tragedy that struck the families of Sohan Lal and Jeevan Lal is a direct consequence of the rising influence and affluence of upper-caste Yadavs. Essentially populated by backward Shakyas, Saadatganj witnessed a huge influx of Yadavs after 2007 when a new barrage on the Ganga protecting the village farmland from annual flooding came up.Himmat Singh, a government primary school teacher from Usait, says the already affluent Yadavs have prospered even more by beginning cultivation of cash crops such as mentha (mint), garlic and tobacco on highly fertile land purchased or summarily usurped from Shakyas. Sinod Kumar Shakya, the BSP legislator from Dadarganj of which Saadatganj is a part, says, "Yadavs began dominating, even turning belligerent, after the Akhilesh-led Samajwadi Party government came to power in March 2012."BJP supporters protest outside Akhilesh Yadavs office against the gang rape,in LucknowConsider this: Four of the policemen posted with the chowki were Yadavs. Eleven of the 17 'history-sheeters' listed here also belong to the community. Lucknow University sociologist Archana Shukla sees a period of upheaval within Uttar Pradesh's smouldering caste cauldron. "Once vulnerable castes are becoming more assertive both economically and politically," she says. "Vulnerable people still become targets but are now more likely to fight back." In such a scenario, it becomes possible for men like Sohan Lal and his brother to reject the 'blood money' offered by the state and demand more. Ironically, Saadatganj's political pilgrims might just ensure speedy trial and exemplary punishment to the five men (including two police personnel) arrested from this one village. If the Chief Minister remains true to his word, the rape and homicide investigation will be conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigation.Since May 27, 11 men have been arrested and booked within hours after they were accused of rape in over a dozen instances reported across Uttar Pradesh. Curiously though, no politicians, even local party men, have chosen to articulate even a murmur of support in solidarity with the victims or their families. In Katra Saadatganj, Sub-Divisional Magistrate O.P. Tiwari is promising "toilets for every home so that no young woman ever needs to venture out from her home". In the meantime, he has made arrangements to cover the sulphurous drain in front of the dead girls' home for the benefit of visiting dignitaries. As for the villagers, well, they have a new helipad nobody can fathom any use for. Follow the writers on Twitter @Asitjolly and@ashudjTo read more, get your copy of India Today here.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Jun 6, 2014 15:56 IST--- ENDS ---

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Badaun case: Politicians line up for photo ops as victims' kin suffer in UP

Politicians have turned the gang rape of two teenagers in Uttar Pradesh into a photo opportunity.

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