Hathras, Uttar Pradesh:
As Uttar Pradesh police traveled to a burial site to cremate the 20-year-old woman who died after her gang rape and torture, her family, relatives and villagers made numerous attempts to arrest them.
They begged the police to hand over the body so they could take the woman home before her funeral.
But the Hathras police were deaf to their calls.
Heartbreaking footage showed women throwing themselves on the hood of the ambulance to prevent police from taking the body away. A woman, believed to be the mother, was seen sitting on the road, crying in pain and slapping her chest as cops refused to hand over her daughter’s body.
The woman’s parents even bowed to the car.
The woman’s father and brothers got into a fight with the cops and even appealed to the district magistrate to be allowed to bring her body home for cremation after daybreak. They said that the last rites in the middle of the night were not part of their tradition.
Nothing worked because the police, after being arrested several times, went directly to the cremation ground. At around 2:30 a.m., the body was cremated with cops forming a human chain to prevent anyone from approaching it. The family was locked in their house, as were the parents.
The overnight cremation sparked outrage across the country, with opposition politicians accusing the police and the UP government of denying the woman her rights and dignity even in the event of death.
The young woman suffered horrific injuries after her gang rape and the September 14 torture by four men from her village.
She had suffered several fractures and a gash in her tongue as the men attempted to strangle her. A neck injury had left her paralyzed and had difficulty breathing unaided.
His family say the police were slow to respond and initially called his injuries “tragic.”
Hathras police have denied the allegations of forced cremation. It was carried out with the consent of the family, the cops as well as the administration said in tweets.