IndiaTomorrow.net,
New Delhi, Feb 9: Amidst the charge being made by top leaders of BJP at election rallies in Uttar Pradesh – that crimes against women going up under the Samajwadi Party government in the state, the Amnesty International on Thursday said that seven Muslim women, gang-raped during the Muzaffarnagar riots in Sep 2013, have not yet got justice as the “Uttar Pradesh government has failed to expeditiously investigate and prosecute” their cases.
“Over three years after the riots, there has not been a single conviction in any of the cases. Despite changes to India’s laws in 2013 requiring trials in rape cases to be completed without unnecessary delay, trials have proceeded extremely slowly. The state government and successive central governments have also failed to adequately protect the survivors from threats and harassment – which in some cases led to them retracting their statements – and to provide adequate reparation,” said the rights group in Delhi.
Amnesty said it interviewed six out of the seven gang rape survivors who had filed FIRs, between July 2016 and January 2017. “In all seven gang-rape cases, the police took months to file charges, and even after they did so, trials have proceeded extremely slowly. Even where the police filed charges – which took between six and 14 months in most cases -, the trials did not commence immediately,” said Amnesty.
More than 50 people were killed during the riots and over 50 thousand others were displaced.
