Uttarakhand: Congress protests rising crimes against women, condemns govt

Congress leaders on Monday staged protests against the recent surge in incidents of crime against women in Uttarakhand, criticising the BJP-led government and state police.

While leader of Opposition in the Uttarakhand Assembly Yashpal Arya led a hour-long maun upwas (silent fast) at Ranikhet, state Congress chief Karan Mahara observed it in Haldwani with other party leaders and workers.

Earlier in the day, Arya issued a statement saying the recent spate in incidents of rape and murder of women in Uttarakhand highlighted how unsafe they were in the BJP-led state.

"The rape and murder of a nurse from Rudrapur in Udham Singh Nagar district and the rape of a teenaged girl inside a bus at the ISBT (inter-state bus terminus) in the state capital barely a week later show how insecure women have become in the state," Arya said in a statement in Dehradun.

The Congress leader also highlighted the alleged gangrape and murder of a minor recently in Haridwar.

The alleged rape of a teenager in an Uttarakhand Roadways bus at the ISBT within a few metres of a police post shows how "laidback" the state police is, Arya added. "The state police is in deep sleep. Criminals have no fear of it. The state government has failed in its responsibility of providing protection to women," he said.

Rebutting the Congress leader's charges, state BJP media in-charge Manveer Chauhan said quick action was taken by the state government in each of the cases cited by him.

"The state government took quick action in each case. The track record of non-BJP governments in other states in this respect is not good," Chauhan said.

Five persons have already been arrested in connection with the alleged rape of a teenaged girl in a bus at Dehradun's ISBT. The accused in the rape and murder of the nurse from Udham Singh Nagar is also behind bars, he said.

The Dehradun incident occurred on 12 August at the bus stand and the police were informed about it on Saturday evening, Dehradun senior superintendent of police Ajay Singh had said on Sunday. Those arrested in the case include the driver and conductor of the government bus, according to the SSP.

In the Udham Singh Nagar incident, the private nurse was allegedly raped while returning home and killed, her face crushed with a stone by the accused, who dumped her body in a vacant plot in an Uttar Pradesh village near the Uttarakhand border.