Dalit woman raped, body chopped off; accused men at large

The accused men are absconding and no arrests have been made in the case, police said.

Banda (UP): A 40-year-old Dalit woman was allegedly murdered after being raped and her body was chopped off into pieces in a village here, police said on Thursday. On Tuesday, the woman went to Rajkumar Shukla’s house to clean his flour mill. When her 20-year-old daughter reached there, she heard her mother’s screams from a room which was bolted from inside, Station House Officer (Girwan) police station Sandeep Tiwari. After some time, when the door of the room opened, the girl saw the mother's body lying in three pieces and informed the police, he said.

Following this, an FIR was registered against Rajkumar, his brother Bauwa Shukla and Ramakrishna Shukla, the SHO said. The accused men are absconding and no arrests have been made in the case, he said.

Meanwhile, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav attacked the state government on the incident.

In a post on X in Hindi, Yadav said, “The news of rape and heinous murder of a Dalit in Banda is heart-wrenching. The women of Uttar Pradesh are scared and also angry.'

The former chief minister also mentioned the incident of stripping and making indecent videos of a female student of IIT-BHU.

'The incident of making a video of a female student of IIT-BHU after stripping her after indecency is a slap on the face of the law and order in Uttar Pradesh and exposes BJP's big lie of zero tolerance,” he said.

“The women of Uttar Pradesh have completely lost faith in the BJP government. Now any expectation from this government is meaningless,' Yadav said.

The SP chief shared a video of a protest being held by the students of IIT-BHU on his social media account.