Bulandshahr gangrape: Akhilesh Yadav and his remarkable ability to deflect all criticism

The Bulandshahr gangrape has added another shameful chapter to the horrific crime graph in Uttar Pradesh. It has also renewed focus on a miraculous Teflon coating that provides immunity to the ruling Samajwadi Party and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav from all accountability for every act of lawlessness that occurs within the premises of India’s largest state. For a state which ranks among the worst in India in terms of criminal activity and has consistently been the most unsafe for women, UP gets an inexplicable short shrift from national media. In an age of hyper media activism, Akhilesh Yadav somehow manages to remain supremely unsullied despite presiding over some of the most outrageous incidents of violence since assuming office in 2012. [caption id=“attachment_2382232” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav. PTI[/caption] From the death of Mohammad Akhlaq to the burning alive of journalist Jagendra Singh, from Badaun sisters’ gangrape and murder to the brutal rape and murder of a Class XII student this year in Lucknow, the Chief Minister and his inept police force have always escaped media scrutiny. Some noise and arrests have been made following the gut-wrenching gangrape of a mother and daughter but it is anybody’s guess whether the focus is due to impending Assembly elections or a genuine intent to restore law and order in a state where even cops fear to tread in the badlands after dark. The media attention, too, could be short-lived, lasting only as long to see whether Friday’s crime acts as an election prop. It may be a deeply cynical view, but facts speak for themselves. Even a full day after a dozen assailants gang raped for three hours a 35-year-old Noida woman and her 14-year-old daughter near Bulandshahr after waylaying the vehicle in which the family of six was travelling on the Delhi-Kanpur highway, Indian Express reported that a golden necklace and a small, soiled dark blue purse still lay abandoned in the damp portion of a millet field where the actual crime took place. Picking these up, local villagers pointed out how the police have failed to recover these crucial pieces of evidence even 24 hours after the incident. The rape survivors were driving down the Delhi-Kanpur National Highway 91 with four other family when muggers threw an axe to stop their car and then dragged the women at gunpoint off the highway into an adjoining field. With one street light every 10 km and no police personnel in sight, the family remained stranded on a deserted stretch, their car stuck in the slush. A _Firstpost_ report also pointed out how the SHO, Ramsen Singh, at Dehat Kotwali police station did not respond to the complaints when the distraught family approached the cops to file an FIR on Saturday and police also did not answer calls on the emergency helpline number. According to data released in 2015 by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), crimes against women across the country increased by around 10 percent in 2014. A total of 3,37,922 cases were registered as against 3,09,546 in 2013. Uttar Pradesh (38,467), shows data, topped the chart for being the state least safe for women with West Bengal (38,299), Rajasthan (31,151 cases), Madhya Pradesh (28,678) and Maharashtra (26,693) making the top five. UP earned the dubious distinction in 2013 as well with maximum number of 32,546 cases. MP, however, topped the list in consolidated crime chart in 2014. NCRB data also showed that most gangrapes took place in Uttar Pradesh with 573 cases being registered; followed by Rajasthan, 414 cases; Delhi, 147. The report also stated that in total 58,592 cases of kidnapping of women and girls were registered in 2014, with the maximum number of cases being reported in Uttar Pradesh at 10,628. UP’s ‘consistency’ is alarming. In 2013, NCRB’s ‘Crime In India — 2013’, showed incidents of rape in UP had increased by over a whopping 50% compared to 2012. UP has reported 3050 rapes last year compared to 1963 rapes reported in the state in 2012. While going through these statistics, bear in mind that the actual number of crimes could be even higher because many cases go unreported due to the deadly cocktail of social stigma and atmosphere of fear. “The actual incidence of crimes has increased so much in UP that it has created a climate of fear in the society that impels people not to report. There is intense fear of the perpetrators, who are almost always from the same locality,” Dr Pradeep Singh, associate professor of law in Banaras Hindu University, told The Times of India in a 2014 report. His views found resonance with Professor Ravi Srivastava of JNU. “In the case of UP and Bihar, often the instructions from the top are clear that cases should not be registered to keep the crime figures down. So official crime figures have a lot more to do with what instructions go down to the police stations from the top.” One part of the problem is the paltry, outdated police force. For over 20 crore UP residents, there are only 1.8 lakh police personnel stretched thin over an area of 2.5 lakh square kilometers. In some cases, cops become complicit in crimes as the burning alive of a journalist in Shahjahanpur last year showed. Family members of Jagendra Singh, who succumbed to burn injuries, claimed that a police officer set him on fire allegedly during a police raid in his residence on 1 June for a “derogatory Facebook post” against then UP minister Ram Murti Varma. Just before his death, Singh was quoted, as saying: “Why did they have to burn me alive? If ministers and goons had something against me, they could have beaten me up instead of pouring kerosene and torching me." The shocking incident led to the booking of an FIR against the minister, Inspector Rai and four others but Akhilesh Yadav administration faced no persistent media or civil society activism. If police apathy is the first part of the problem, sheer insensitivity displayed time and again from senior SP netas are the second part. It is a reflection of the arrogance the party and its administration suffer from, cocooned in the knowledge it can somehow justify gravest criminal acts and emerge unscathed. Shortly after journalist Jagendra Singh was burnt alive, a cabinet member of the UP government presented a bizarre defence for colleague Ram Murti Varma. Parasnath Yadav went on record saying the journalist’s death must have been written in his destiny. The brazenness mirrored a similar statement from SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, who in 2014 amid growing criticism over deteriorating law and order in Uttar Pradesh following the gang-rape and murder of a 30-year-old woman in Lucknow, had said that the state government should not be expected to keep a check on each and every crime. “The population of Uttar Pradesh is 21 crore. The least number of rapes take place in Uttar Pradesh. Every crime cannot be checked in the state. The police take action against the criminals if such cases take place.” How many column spaces have been spent in articles outraging against such acts of brazen defiance? It must be the handiwork of that inexplicable, invisible Teflon coating.