New Delhi: No daughter of “Mother India” should be slaughtered on “the altar of caste, religion and patriarchy,” asserts a forum of Catholic nuns, brothers and priests practicing as lawyers.

Condemning the recent rape and death of a Dalit girl in Uttar Pradesh, the National Lawyers Forum of Religious and Priests (NLFRP) on October 7 demanded an uncompromising commitment from the federal and the northern Indian state governments to do justice and uphold the rule of law.

The 19-year-old woman from a village in Hathras district was allegedly gang-raped and assaulted by four upper caste men on September 14. She died of her wounds 15 days later at the Safdarjung Hospital in the national capital.

Her assailants had allegedly dragged her into a field, and then raped and assaulted her. They left her grievously injured and unconscious. According to the police, the accused had strangled the woman with her shawl, damaging her spinal cord and neck. She allegedly bit her tongue off too while trying to resist the assault.

“The executive committee of NLFRP takes cognizance of the crimes against the young Dalit woman and terms it a national shame. NLFRP unreservedly expresses its empathetic solidarity with the suffering victims,” says a press release issued by forum spokesperson Jesuit Father Arockiasamy Santhanam, who is based in Madurai, Tamil Nadu.

The forum bemoans that the country, “gloriously characterized as Mother India,” has witnessed “a series of horrendous and abhorrent episodes of violence, rape and murder against women.” It further says the state administration has tainted and shamed the image of ‘Mother India’ irretrievably by allowing and ignoring such recurring crimes against women.

The forum says “the Hathras horrors” have established the rule of the mighty and the top police officer of the district has thrown “all legal norms to dustbin” and “danced to the dictates of the ruler.”

The forum sees attempts to “entomb the truth and keep narrative alive” in events such as “the inordinate delay in registering” the First Information Report, violation of doctors’ reference to admit the victim in All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, and the police “inconspicuously and forcibly cremating” the victim’s body.

The Catholic lawyers also criticized the administration “stifling” the media and democratic forces and mass deployment of security personnel under the pretext of safeguarding witnesses and preserving evidences.

The Forum appealed to the National Human Rights Commission, National Women’s Commission and National Commission for SC/ST to register a case, conduct independent enquiry into the occurrence and into the blatant and irreparable defilement by the police beyond issuing show cause notice and intervene as parties in support of the victim in the suo motto case pending in the High Court of Allahabad.

It wants the Supreme Court approved Witness Protection Scheme 2018 implemented in in all Indian states and Union Territories, especially in Uttar Pradesh.

The National Bureau of Crime Records noted in 2019 that a rape took place every 16 minutes in India. But the Bureau of Police Research and Development had procured only 3,120 rape kits for nationwide distribution, the forum says.

The rape kits are meant to collect evidences and samples to be sent for forensic examination as the forensic report always plays a decisive role in trial and conviction of the guilty. The federal Ministry of Health &and Family Welfare in 2017 issued comprehensive guidelines on medical examinations of sexual violence victims, explains the forum that suspects that many states are yet to adopt and effectively implemented the guidelines.

The forum strongly demanded that India should put a stop to the violence and horrendous crimes committed against women. “Women of our land have suffered enough. No daughter of Mother India could be tolerated to be slaughtered on the vanity altar of caste, religion and patriarchy.”