UP shockers

Uttar Pradesh’s hall of shame continues to expand, unrelentingly displaying vicious incidents against girls, laden with casteist or communal overtones. While 2021 began with the shameful murders of two Dalit girls in an Unnao field in February, it is ending with another dark spot on the state’s pockmarked law and order canvas: the thrashing of a Dalit girl in an Amethi village, ostensibly for a mobile phone theft, on December 29. Going by Opposition leader Priyanka Vadra’s statement to CM Yogi Adityanath as she demanded justice for the poor girl that ‘on an average, 34 crime incidents against Dalits take place every day under your rule and 135 against women, yet your law and order machinery is sleeping’, more brutalities may have been unleashed in the last three days of 2021. The shockers fly in the face of Yogi’s tall claims of having tackled the law and order problem head on with the recruitment of 1.5 lakh more cops, spread across districts to contain crime.

Each day weighs disturbingly heavy as every other corner is a potential spot of doom for unsuspecting girls going about their daily chores. Among those falling prey to trigger-happy goons ready to wield the gun and take the law into their hands at the slightest pretext are girls going out to study with the aim of bettering their parents’ lives. With their 16-year-old girl having been murdered on her way to a coaching class in Bulandshahr, a Dalit family’s hopes lie shattered. Earlier, July saw the barbaric beating to death, allegedly by the grandfather and uncles of a 17-year-old girl, as she had chosen to wear jeans in Deoria district.

While the Amethi case has come into the limelight as the viral video of the incident became fodder for the Opposition to take on the authorities in the poll-bound state, most monstrosities perpetrated go unreported and unnoticed. The abysmally low rate of deterring punishment meted out to the guilty only perpetuates the culture of the rule of the might rather than that of the rule of law. The system has failed to ensure a safe environment for the girls.