A special court for hearing Scheduled Caste/ Scheduled Tribe cases on Tuesday convicted five men of raping a Dalit woman in Rajasthan’s Alwar last year, the Hindustan Times reported. Four of the five were awarded life imprisonment, while the fifth was sentenced to five years in jail under the Information Technology Act, for circulating the video of the crime on social media.
On April 26, 2019, the five men had accosted the woman and her husband while they were travelling on a motorcycle in Thanagazi area of Alwar. They had taken the couple to an isolated spot where they raped the 18-year-old Dalit woman and thrashed her husband. One of the accused even recorded the crime and uploaded it on social media.
The woman’s family had accused the police of not taking timely action. They filed a complaint on April 30, but alleged that the police registered an FIR only on May 2. The police allegedly had told the couple that they did not have enough personnel to look into the matter because of the ongoing parliamentary elections. The woman’s brother-in-law said the police, including officials of the Thana Ghazi police station, told them to wait till the elections are over.
The district superintendent of police, Rajiv Pachar, was removed from his post based on the couple’s complaint and the Thana Ghazi police station house officer Sardar Singh was also suspended for delaying initial action. Three other police personnel were also placed under suspension.
The verdict comes at a time of nationwide outrage over crimes against women, after four upper-caste Thakur men brutally tortured and gangraped a Dalit woman in Hathras district of Uttar Pradesh. The woman succumbed to he injuries. The four men have been arrested.
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