Unnao Rape victim's family stage dharna, demand capital punishment for criminals

In a fresh twist to the Unnao rape and murder case, the family of the victim has now threatened to exhume her body and carry it to Lucknow if the government fails to keep its promise of ensuring capital punishment to the accused.

The family members, on Wednesday, sat on dharna at the burial site.

The family members, on Monday, had stopped the district administration from building a concrete structure over the grave.

Station House Officer (SHO) Vikas Pandey said: "The district administration began to concretise the burial site on Monday but the family members rushed to the site and created a ruckus. Block office employees supervising the work were told to stop work immediately. The masons were asked to go and family members removed bricks and chipped off the cement on the grave. They said they will not allow a concrete structure till their demands are met."

The elder sister of the gang-rape victim also threatened that she would end her life if her family does not get speedy justice. She also demanded a meeting with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

"If our demands for a job to a family member, issuance of a gun licence and allotment of a house and death sentence to the accused are not fulfilled quickly, we will dig up the body and carry it to the Chief Minister's residence in Lucknow. We cannot go by verbal commitments," she told reporters.

Her family has demanded that the accused be handed the punishment in a manner similar to those accused of raping and killing a young veterinarian in Hyderabad.

"If the government cannot ensure death for the accused, they should kill us and bury us all together here," she added.

The Sub-Divisional Magistrate Daya Shankar Pathak, circle officer A.K. Rai and revenue official Sujit Kumar Tiwari reached the spot and tried to convince the victim's family but the latter remained unrelenting.

Four men were arrested in the Hyderabad case on the charges of rape and murder but were killed by the police in an "encounter". The Unnao rape victim was set on fire by five people, including two men accused of raping her, last week when she was going to Rae Bareli to attend a court hearing. She suffered 90 per cent burn injuries and was airlifted to Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital but died during treatment. Both the incidents, coming one after the other, had triggered outrage across the country.

Meanwhile, in a related development, trouble seems to be mounting for the main accused in the rape and murder case Shubham Trivedi.

Trivedi had claimed in court that he was in Sumerpur hospital in Unnao for a minor surgery on the dates in December 2018 when the rape of the victim took place.

According to the hospital medical superintendent Vinay Tomar, the hospital register does not substantiate the claim of the rape accused.

"I took charge in August. This is now a high profile matter which I had got to know through the media. Expecting the police or some other probe agencies to enquire about it, I studied the record and found that no such person had either been admitted or discharged from the hospital during this period," said Tomar.

It may be recalled that after being released on bail, Shubham, along with his cousin Trivedi, their fathers and another person had set the rape victim ablaze on the early hours of December 5.

The victim suffered 90 per cent burns and died on December 6 during treatment in the Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi.

DGP OP Singh, on the other hand, said that the dying declaration of the 23-year-old Unnao rape victim is a strong evidence to nail her five killers in court.

He said that the dying declaration of the rape victim had been recorded before an administrative magistrate while she was being treated at Lucknow's Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Civil Hospital.