A court in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday acquitted three of the four accused in the sensational 2020 Hathras case in which a 19-year-old Dalit woman was allegedly raped and murdered by upper-caste attackers. The court held accused Sandeep Singh guilty of the offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Indian Penal Code, section 304 and for the offences under the SC/ST Act and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
“Sandeep Singh who was convicted under IPC Section 304 and sections of SC/ST Act by the Special Judge (SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act), Hathras, judge Trilok Pal Singh, was given life imprisonment,” said Seema Kushwaha, the lawyer who represented the woman’s family.
Kushwaha said that the other three accused – Ravi, Luv Kush and Ramu – were acquitted of all charges by the court. “We will challenge the verdict in the higher court,” she added.
The verdict in the 2020 Hathras case, which was said to be equally brutal as the 2012 Delhi fatal gang-rape case, however, has been welcomed by the family members of those acquitted.
In the charge sheet, the CBI had accused the three of committing offences under IPC sections 376-D (gang-rape), 376 (rape), 302 (murder), and other offences under SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
However, none of the four accused has been found guilty of the offences of gang rape or murder by the special court.
On September 14, 2020, the 19-year-old woman was allegedly gang-raped and assaulted by four upper-caste men, who left her bleeding in a field in Hathras. She was found by her family and taken to a hospital in Aligarh and then to Delhi. She, however, succumbed eleven days later in Safdarjung Hospital, Delhi, from where the body was taken to her village late at night and was allegedly forcibly cremated by Uttar Pradesh police at 3.30am in the absence of her family members.
The Allahabad high court took suo motu cognisance of the matter in October 2020. It said the incidents that took place after the death and leading up to her cremation as alleged have shocked “our conscience” and transferred the case to CBI for investigation.
The CBI filed a charge sheet against all four accused in December 2020.
Senior lawyer S Mohammed Haider said the judgement comes as a shocker as not only the investigation of the premier investigation agency of the country, i.e., the CBI has been rubbished in its entirety, acquittal of 3 out of 4 accused, with only one conviction, and that too under section 304, is a tell-tale sign of the kind of investigation that was carried out.
“The state needs to take a very conscious call and initiate an appeal urgently, post reading the judgement and brainstorming. This is needed to instil public confidence in the prosecution matrix of the government,” said Haider.
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