On September 29,  at 6:15 am in the morning, after a cardiac arrest, the victim of Hathras gangrape incident (name concealed) lost her battle to the injuries and pain which she had been enduring all through the 15 days long ordeal. After that, her body was brought to her village around the midnight.  The victim was the youngest among the five siblings. The Bhim army chief Chandrashekhar Azad had accompanied the father to the village. The cremation was carried out at around 2 to 3 am in the dead of the night. The family of the victims asserted that the body was forcibly taken away by the authorities for cremation so as to do away with the case as soon as possible. The local police and other authorities denied the allegations stating that the cremation was carried out with the permission of the family. This argument by the authorities fall flat on its face as locals said that except for the father, no other person including those from media was allowed at the cremation site which was sealed off by the police. The brother of the victim had told the news agency PTI, that as soon as the father of the victim had reached the village (Boolgarhi) from New Delhi, he was taken to the cremation site. The brother also stated to the Indian Express that the authorities did not allow the body to be taken to the home.

On September 14, four upper-caste men (Sandip, Ramu, Lavkush and Ravi) had dragged away the 19-year-old girl with her dupatta when she was in the field arranging for fodder for their cattle. The girl was earlier taken to the JN Medical College and Hospital in Aligarh, after which she was shifted to the Safdarjung hospital in New Delhi. It was found out that her tongue was cut, the spine was broken, and her neck was broken with all her four limbs paralyzed.  The medical report confirms strangulation and brutal assault. This incident comes as another grim reminder about the state of affairs in the state of Uttar Pradesh in matters related to the safety of women. Observers stated that the administration hushed and fast-tracked the entire cremation process without taking the consent of the family as the victims are from the dalit category and the perpetrators belong to the higher caste.

As a result of the entire episode, the CM of UP has ordered the formation of a three-member SIT team to examine the incident. The brother of the victim stated that they got the news about her death in the morning when the victim’s father called home from New Delhi. Local reports state that around half of the families in the village are of Thakurs, Brahmins make up around 100 and only about 15 odd families were from dalit category. It has been claimed that due to this socio-caste make-up of the village, the issue of the gangrape is being tried to be pushed under the mat. The family of the victim had a nearly two-decades-old dispute with the family of one of the perpetrators. The locals said that the victim was born in the same year when the grandfather of one of the perpetrators was booked under SC/ST Act and had to spend three months in prison for thrashing the victims’s grandfather.

This incident adds to the grim statistics of the state of Uttar Pradesh in matters related to violence against women and atrocities against the dalits. In 2017, in the run-up to the assembly polls, PM had blamed the then Samajwadi Party government of not providing safety to the women. The situation has not changed much in three years as evinced in the Hathras incident.