Etawah, again: Rape victim's mother stripped in Mulayam's hometown

Even as there is shock and outrage over the rape and murder of two teenage Dalit girls in Badaun in UP, another gruesome story of injustice has come to light. According to a report on IBN-Live , the mother of a rape survivor was brutally beaten by the father of a rape accused in Etawah, the home district of Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. The report says that, “the woman was allegedly attacked by Basant Yadav and four other people. Her condition has been critical and the family is being forced to withdraw the case.” According to a Zee News report, “Sunny, son of Basant Lal Yadav, who stays in the neighbourhood, barged into the house of the woman and raped her daughter on May 11.” [caption id=“attachment_1548397” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Image used for representational purpose only. AP[/caption] He was caught and arrested by the police and a case was registered. Even after the arrest, the survivor and her family was living under the threat of backlash from the accused and his family, says the report on IBN-Live. The Zee News report also says “that the rape victim’s mother was not only beaten, but also stripped in public and was assaulted by Basant and four others.” Currently the woman has been admitted to a hospital, but the police is yet to make an arrest in the latest assault case. This is just the latest in a string of sexual violence tragedies in Mulayam Singh Yadav’s hometown, as Firstpost has noted before . In 2013, a 20-year-old college student was gangraped and then set on fire by the rapists in a bid to erase evidence of the crime. The same year, an 18-year-old boy was beaten to death on the Etawah-Lucknow highway because he protested against eve teasers who were harassing his sister. In another case, a young girl filed a police complaint saying she was kidnapped from a busy market place in Etawah and gangraped in a moving car. Then there was the minor girl who killed herself. In her suicide note she alleged that five young men who tried to rape her and shot a video of the assault, were threatening to make the video public. And the body of a 16-year-old – completely naked, with multiple injuries on her body, her private parts brutalised – which was found in a well just 150 metres from her house. And that’s just in one year, in one district, ie Etawah. But none of this should be surprising given Mulayam’s indulgent view of rape. On the campaign trail this year, the SP honcho infamously declared , “Ladke, ladke hain. Galti ho jati hai (Boys are boys. They commit mistakes).”