Hathras case: Are Indian state police trying to discount a woman's story of rape?

Saturday, 3 October 2020Newsdesk

Days after the death of a 19-year-old Dalit woman who was allegedly gang raped and assaulted in India's northern Uttar Pradesh state, a senior state police official appeared to imply the woman was not raped because semen was not found. Additional Director General Prashant Kumar told reporters on Thursday that the forensic report had found "no semen or semen excretion" in the viscera sample of the victim, and the cause of death was due to "trauma caused by the assault".

New Delhi, 03 October 2020

As per news report of bbc.com, Mr Kumar also claimed that the woman's family had not mentioned rape in the initial complaint. But in fact the victim had given a statement to the police in the presence of a magistrate in the hospital saying that she had been gang-raped. A dying declaration by a rape victim is admissible evidence in India's courts. And he said there had been attempts to stir caste tensions and disrupt peace by "putting out twisted facts in the media" - possibly an allusion to the widespread coverage that the teenager, a Dalit, had been gang-raped and murdered by upper-caste men. Dalits sit at the bottom of India's caste system and are some of the country's most downtrodden citizens. They face widespread discrimination, despite laws to protect them.

Source -bbc.com