New Delhi: A delegation of Congress MPs led by former party chief Rahul Gandhi were headed to Hathras on Saturday afternoon to meet the family of the 19-year-old woman who died after she was assaulted and allegedly gang-raped.
Priyanka Gandhi was driving a silver Toyota Innova with her brother Rahul Gandhi sitting next to her. They were headed to the DND toll plaza. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor also posted a picture of him driving a car and said he was headed to Hathras, about 180 km from the national capital.
There was heavy police deployment on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border with barricades on Delhi-Noida Direct (DND) flyway and scores of policemen deployed.
“Congress MPs under the leadership of former Congress president Rahul Gandhi will go to Hathras today afternoon to meet the grieving family of the 19-year old-daughter of Uttar Pradesh, who was brutally assaulted & murdered,” Congress general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal tweeted.
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UP cops deployed at Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border
Heavy police deployment has come up on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border in Noida on Saturday, ahead of a scheduled visit of a Congress delegation that plans to meet the family of a 19-year-old Dalit woman in Hathras who died after allegedly being gang-raped.
Barricades were installed at the Delhi-Noida Direct (DND) flyway, where scores of policemen, including senior officers, were present in anti-riot gears since noon, even as CrPC section 144 remained imposed in Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Buddh Nagar.
“The border is not sealed but checks have been intensified at the Delhi-Noida border,” according to a local police official.
Scores of Congress and the party’s youth wing workers reached the DND flyway around 2 pm, even as some party workers were allegedly detained by the Gautam Buddh Nagar Police.
“Some of Congress and Youth Congress workers have been detained in Gautam Buddh Nagar and put under house arrest, including our district president Manoj Chaudhary. But we have gathered here at DND and would go to Hathras with our leaders today,” Indian Youth Congress (IYC) national secretary Deepak Bhati told PTI.
On Thursday, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi along with several party leaders and workers were detained by the police and sent back to Delhi, after they tried to reach Hathras to meet the family of the Dalit woman.
In a tweet in Hindi using the hashtag ‘Hathrashorror’, Rahul Gandhi said the behaviour of the UP government and police with the woman and her family “is unacceptable to me. No Indian should accept this.”
Rahul Gandhi asserted that “no power in the world can stop me from meeting this grieving family in Hathras and share their pain”.
Hitting out at the Yogi Adityanath dispensation, Priyanka Gandhi said the UP government is “morally corrupt”.
“The victim did not get treatment, her complaint was not registered on time, her body was forcibly cremated, the family is in captivity, they are being suppressed — now they are being threatened that they will have to undergo a narco test,” she said in a tweet in Hindi.
“This behaviour is not acceptable to the country. Stop threatening the victim’s family,” she said.
The party alleged that the woman and her family have been denied justice and “severely traumatised” by the BJP government in their attempt to hide the truth of the heinous crime perpetrated on her.
The Dalit woman was allegedly raped at a village in Hathras by four upper caste men on September 14. After her condition deteriorated, she was referred to the Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital where she breathed her last on Tuesday.
She 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.
Local police officers, however, had said the cremation was carried out “as per the wishes of the family”.
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