Sonia meets family of Dalit rape victim: assures help
Amid outrage over a spate of rape incidents in Haryana, Congress president Sonia Gandhi today met the family of a Dalit teenaged girl, who immolated herself after being allegedly gang-raped in this district and said perpetrators of such “barbaric” crimes must be given severe punishment.
She said those guilty of such heinous crimes, which take place not only in Haryana but elsewhere too, must be “severely punished”.
“Main is tarah ki ghatnaon ki bharpoor ninda karti hoon. Doshiyoon ko sakht se sakht saza milni chahiye (I strongly condemn such incidents. The guilty must be severely punished),” Sonia told reporters in a brief interaction at village Sachha Khera in Narwana town of this district.
She met the victim’s family after her arrival at about 10 am and assured them of all possible help. After her meeting, Sonia, when asked to comment on the growing number of such cases in Haryana in the recent past, said such crimes do not take place in the State alone, but other parts of the country as well and were condemnable.
She assured “full justice” to the poor Dalit victim’s family during her meeting that lasted a few minutes.
The gang-rape victim had on Saturday doused herself with kerosene and in her dying statement made before a Magistrate said she took the extreme step after her rape. After the incident, the mother of the victim, who has six children, had threatened that if justice was not done, she too would commit suicide.
Sonia was accompanied by Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, who met the victim’s family for the first time after the incident on Saturday. Union minister Kumari Selja, Haryana minister Randeep Singh Surjewala and Congress MP from Sirsa, Ashok Tanwar were also present.
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