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Hathras gangrape: Woman’s family in Lucknow; appears in high court amid tight security
The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court had taken suo motu cognizance of the case and had asked the woman’s parents for their version of the incident
The family of the 19-year-old Dalit woman in Hathras, who died after an alleged gangrape last month, was escorted to Lucknow and kept under tight security at Uttarakhand Bhavan in Lucknow, ahead of their appearance before the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court on Monday.
The woman’s parents and two brothers reached Lucknow by road earlier in the day. Escorted by UP police, they reached Uttarakhand Bhavan a little after 11am. Citing security issues, the local police put up barricades and stopped all traffic leading towards the Bhavan. The family was taken inside right away and was not allowed to meet the press outside.
Senior officials like Lucknow district magistrate Abhishek Prakash, commissioner of police Sujeet Pandey and deputy commissioner of police (DCP) East, Charu Nigam, also inspected the security arrangements outside the Bhavan. Pandey said, “The family has been kept under security as per court orders. We have made arrangements to ensure that they are safe before their appearance in court.”
Seema Kushwaha, a Delhi-based lawyer who fought the Nirbhaya case, is representing the family in the case. She reached the Bhavan at 1pm and interacted briefly with the family.
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“The family has three demands which we will put before the high court bench. First, we want security for the family. Second, the trial of the case must be shifted to Delhi or Mumbai and aspects of the investigation must not be made public by the investigating authorities,” Kushwaha said.
Taking a dig at the Special Investigation Team (SIT) for revealing call details between the accused and the victim’s brother, Kushwaha said a ‘perception’ was being created to take the focus away from the case.
Almost an hour later, the family was taken from Uttarakhand Bhavan to the high court located less than a kilometre away. The court proceedings were under way at the time of filing of this report.
Earlier in the morning, when the family set off for Lucknow, it was accompanied by subdivisional magistrate Anjali Gangwar, Hathras district magistrate Praveen Kumar, and superintendent of police Vineet Jaiswal.
The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court had taken suo motu cognizance of the case on October 1. It had asked the woman’s parents for their version of the incident and had also ordered the Hathras district administration to arrange for their travel to the court and facilitate their appearance before it. The high court had directed the district judge to ensure that the woman’s family appeared before it on Monday.
The court had also sought the presence of senior state government and Hathras administration officials in the court.
The woman was allegedly gang-raped and brutalised in Hathras on September 14. She succumbed to her injuries in Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital on September 29. Four of the accused are in custody and the case has been handed over to the CBI, which has registered an FIR at its Ghaziabad unit.
