For Unnao rape victim, fight for justice proving costly

For the Unnao rape victim, the fight for justice has proved to be very costly.

The victim lost four members of her family, including her father, since BJP lawmaker Kuldeep Singh Senger turned the family's enemy last year.

One of the uncles of the victim, a resident of Makhi village in Uttar Pradesh's Unnao district, about 70 kilometres from here, had been hacked to death allegedly by the supporters of Senger last year.

Within days after Senger was arrested by the CBI for allegedly raping the teen in April last year, her father, whom the MLA had got arrested by the police on trumped-up charges, died inside the jail under mysterious circumstances. The medical examination revealed multiple injuries on his body.

Then on Sunday, a truck smashed into the car in which the victim, her two aunts and her lawyer were travelling in the neighbouring Raebareli district killing the aunts on the spot and wounding the victim and the lawyer critically.

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''The MLA had told us that he would get my entire family killed and he is doing that,'' Mahesh Singh, the uncle of the victim, said. Mahesh, who was lodged in Raebareli district jail, apprehended threat to his life.

''Senger may get me killed inside the jail just like my brother,'' he said.

Incidentally, three of those killed were also witnesses in the rape and threat case.

In between another key witness in the case, Yunus Khan, had also died under mysterious circumstances in the village. He had been buried by his family without informing the CBI, which was investigating the matter.

''The body should be exhumed and a post-mortem should be conducted to ascertain the cause behind the death,'' the uncle of the victim had then demanded. The local police, however, had claimed that the witness in question suffered from a liver ailment, which might have caused his death.

Interestingly the two families were once very close to each other. The seed of enmity was sown when the victim's uncle decided to contest against the MLA's mother in the election for 'pradhan' (panchayat chief) of the village.