‘Let Media Go, Mahabharat Bana Denge’: Threats for Family of Girls Killed in Badaun

Badaun, UP – The family of the two young girls who were gang-raped and found hanging from a mango tree in Katra Sahadat Ganj village in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh, last week say they are now being threatened.

The tiny village has been overrun with politicians and media teams since the day the two girls, cousins aged 14 and 15, were found dead, which caused global outrage. The father of one of the girls said today, “We are feeling scared, we are being threatened that the media will leave, leaders will leave but the government will stay for three more years. They say hum mahabharat kar dengey (we’ll cause a war).”

The girls’ family have now demanded that Central forces be deployed to protect them as they do not trust the state police.

The family has earlier alleged that the police had refused to register cases and act against the accused on the night that the girls were abducted and killed, because they belong to the dominant Yadav community to which Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav too belongs.

This morning, when a few villagers approached the local police to seek help in another case of alleged abduction, a cop was caught on camera refusing to register a first information report. He asked the villagers to get him a written complaint first.

The villagers allege that all the cops they had approached tried to fob them off.

But the ruling Samajwadi Party insists that the horrific killing of the two girls was an aberration. Dharmendra Yadav, a local MP who is also the nephew of Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, says, “We assure you that not just in this district but across UP you will not hear of such an incident again. Whatever action could be taken within three days by the UP government has been done.”

Five people accused of raping and murdering the teenagers have been arrested. Two cops have been dismissed from duty.

Leaders like Rahul Gandhi of the Congress, the BSP’s Mayawati and Union minister Ram VIlas Paswan have visited Badaun and have offered lacerating criticism of Akhilesh Yadav’s handling of law and order in the state.

BJP workers today picketed Mr Yadav’s office in Lucknow; the police used water cannons to disperse them.