LUCKNOW / DELHI, India (Reuters) – Indian police on Thursday arrested several opposition leaders who were heading to the site where a lower-caste woman died after being raped in an organization, the latest high-profile attack to stoke the anger and protests across the country.
The 19-year-old victim of the Dalit community, facing violence and discrimination, died from his injuries Tuesday after the September 14 attack on a box near his home in Hathras district, the government announced.
Police arrested four men for rape.
India is one of the most damaging places for women in the world, with violations every 15 minutes, according to federal knowledge, figures that human rights teams largely underestimate the scale of the problem.
Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi, brothers and sisters and leaders of the main opposition party in Congress, were blocked and arrested by police while trying to drive and then walk to see the woman’s family circle in Hathras, about a hundred miles from Delhi, the party said.
Video images from news firm ANI showed Rahul, descendant of 3 former prime ministers, fighting with police before falling to the ground. Congress said that other prominent members had also been arrested, without giving more deaf people.
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Protesters and security forces clashed Wednesday in the northern district of Uttar Pradesh state after police incinerated the woman’s body.
The victim’s brother told Reuters that cremation contrary to the wishes of his family, which had sought to perform funeral rites, which local officials deny.
Twenty-five other people were arrested after the riots, according to a police report. A witness told Reuters that the police used arrears.
Authorities said Thursday they banned gatherings of five or more other people and would block politicians in the region.
The victim and his brother are not known because of legislation prohibiting naming victims of sexual violence. The four arrested men belonged to a higher caste, his brother told Reuters.
Uttar Pradesh, which has a population of more than 200 million and is led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party, is especially harmful to women.
Opposition leaders have highlighted several other violent incidents in Uttar Pradesh in recent days, adding allegations of group rape of a Dalit woman in Balrampur.
(Information via Saurabh Sharma in Lucknow and Alasdair Pal in New Delhi; edited through Simon Cameron-Moore and Andrew Cawthorne)
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