Uttar Pradesh police shielding accused in rape, murder case of Dalit woman, says fact-finding report

Uttar Pradesh police guilty of gross negligence in Dalit woman's rape, murder case: report. Police attempted to dilute caste atrocity, sealed mill 3 days after crime, changed charges to bailable offences.

A fact-finding report by a team of advocates and human rights activists has found the Uttar Pradesh police guilty of gross negligence and shielding men from an upper caste community who allegedly gang-raped and murdered a Dalit woman in Banda district on October 31.

The police made considerable attempts to dilute the “caste atrocity”, said the report published this week by Dalit Dignity and Justice Centre, Bundelkhand Dalit Adhikar Manch, Vidhya Dham Samiti, Chingari Sangathan, and Youth for Human Rights Documentation.

The 40-year-old woman’s dismembered body was found at a flour mill in Pataura village. According to the report, the mill’s owner, Bauwa Shukla, had engaged the woman to plaster the building’s walls around 2.30 p.m.

On being alerted by a neighbour, the woman’s daughter reached the mill and found it locked. When the owner finally opened it, she found her mother’s decapitated body, with the severed head and left arm lying a short distance away.

“She saw five to six people in the mill, two of whom fled immediately. Those who remained were Bauwa Shukla, Rajkumar Shukla, and Ramkrishna Shukla,” the report said.

An FIR was registered on November 1, and Nitin Kumar, Deputy Superintendent of Police of Naraini, launched an investigation into the case. 

The report said Mr. Kumar tried to convince the villagers that the woman had died in an “accident” after getting caught in a machine at the mill and that it was not a “brutal case of gang rape, murder, and caste atrocity”.