Moral policing gone viral: WhatsApp clip reveals 6 goons brutally assaulting couple in UP

A gang of six men accosted a young couple in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras district, abused and thrashed them, video-taped the entire episode and shared the clip on WhatsApp which later went viral. The assault goes on for over 10 minutes. The incident which happened on 8 March came in public eye only on 13 March after a few local channels aired the video, a report in The Indian Express said. Here’s what happened: A girl and her friend were returning back from a college function on the guy’s bike when they were intercepted by the six men. While a few of the men started beating up the boy, the others were busy assaulting the woman. Broken sentences by the girl suggest that she is pleading with her assaulter to leave them alone and promising they will not do “it” again. [caption id=“attachment_2160167” align=“alignleft” width=“380” class=" “]  Screengrab.[/caption] “Never call me after today,” the girl tells the boy in the video after she is threatened by these goons. But the goons did not stop despite her pleas. After mercilessly thrashing the boy, the men molested the girl, reports added. According to a report in the NDTV, the girl initially did not talk about the incident with her family.  Her uncle later saw the video on WhatsApp and reported the matter to the police. (While several media houses shared the video (with the faces of the victims blurred), we, at Firstpost, think that sharing the video would play to the intentions of the goons who shot it.) According to a report in the Daily Mail, the police arrested four of the assailants and two of them are absconding. The surprising thing, though, is that no assault charges have been filed against the men. “We are trying to book them under the Goonda Act. We have recovered country-made weapons from their possession,” Superintendent of Police Deepika Sharma told Daily Mirror. Speaking to Daily Mail, the girl said, “I tried to protect my friend but they also pushed me and started thrashing me. They removed the scarf from my face and forced me to utter vulgar words. They said they will make the video go viral so that other boys and girls learn a lesson.” It is hardly surprising that this khap version of justice took place in remote Uttar Pradesh, which has become notorious both for its mardana misogyny and goonda raj under Akhilesh Yadav. When the foreign-educated Yadav took over as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, he was expected to take bolder steps to curb violence  against women in his state. But the 40-year-old CM has been a disappointment. When the nation was outraging over the brutal rape and murder of the Badaun sisters, UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav answering a female journlist’s question showed no sensitivity and instead spat back at her saying, “Aapko toh khatra nahin hua? (it’s not as if you faced any danger?)” And this kind of complacency was displayed by a few other senior leaders of Samajwadi Party, including the party supremo, Mulayam Singh Yadav. In an equally callous moment, this is what the SP chief said about capital punishment for rapists: “Ladkiyan pehle dosti karti hain. Ladke-ladki mein matbhed ho jata hai. Matbhed hone key baad usey rape ka naam dey deti hain. Ladko sey galti ho jati hai. Kya rape case mein phasi di jayegi? (First girls develop friendship with boys. They when differences occur, they level rape charges. Boys commit mistakes. Will they be hanged for rape)” The absurdity of the family became apparent when Ramgopal Yadav, Mulayam’s cousin and SP ideologue, claimed that when a relationship between a boy and girl is exposed, it becomes rape. “In many places, when the relationship between girls and boys come out in open, it is termed as rape. In many places, girls and boys are ready (to marry) but honour killings take place,” the senior SP leader had said. So it is all the more ironic that Akhilesh Yadav celebrated Valentine’s day by inaugarating a ’lover’s bench’ at the Taj Mahal in Agra in what was supposed to be a thumb-nosing gesture at the saffron groups protesting ‘indecent couples’.  Too bad, Yadav seems to be better at sitting on benches than ruling his own state.