The whole country is heartbroken as we are mourning the death of a 19-year-old, who was brutally raped and murdered by four men in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras.
Hathras gang-rape is another reminder of why Indian parents raising daughters have sleepless nights thinking about the safety of their daughters. Not only the rape, but it was also her struggle during her treatment, and how she was bid the last goodbye broke us. It exposed us to the ugliest truth of our Indian society how our daughters not only devoid of respect during their lives, but even after their death too.
The brutality with which the 19-year-old was raped and murdered shows how less those men respected her!
As the victim resisted against her abusers, she suffered multiple injuries and fracture with her tongue being cut. Her spinal cord was broken as her abusers dragged her with a dupatta. As per the sources, a spokesman of the hospital said that her legs were completely paralyzed and arms partially paralyzed when she was brought to the hospital.
How she struggled alone for 2 weeks with no authorities coming forward to support her shows how less as a society we respected her!
After struggling for almost 2 weeks, when she succumbed to injuries, the media, celebrities, and other authorities wake up to the news and demanded justice. But sadly, it was too late. Why the media took so long to bring her painful story to the masses?
And, finally how she was bid the last goodbye shows how this daughter didn’t even get respect after her death!
The final goodbye is the time given family to seek closure and to pay their respect to the deceased one. But, this 19-year-old and her family didn’t get that either.
The victim’s brothers told The Indian Express,
“The ambulance is on the main road; police are not letting us take the body inside the house. They have switched on the lights of the cremation ground and are forcing us to perform her last rites right now. We don’t want to cremate her in the middle of the night; we want to take her home.”
And then two hours later, videos and photos from the village showed a lone pyre with no family members near it. That was her last goodbye!
This is how #ManishaValmiki
— Surya Pratap Singh IAS Rtd. (@suryapsingh_IAS) September 30, 2020
was forcibly cremated last night by #Hathras police, after locking up the family away, as if she did not deserve her respectful last rights, too.
Shouldn’t we all hang our head in Shame !#Yogi_Must_Resign #अजय_बिष्ट_इस्तीफ़ा_दो#CBI4Hathras pic.twitter.com/2XAwTZPapA
Around 3:30 pm, while sharing his pain of being forced to let go of her sister, the woman’s brother told the reporters:
“It appears that my sister has been cremated; the police are not telling us anything. We begged them to let us bring her body inside the house one last time, but they didn’t listen to us,”
Videos of the mother who lost her daughter to such an unfortunate incident also surfaced that showed her pleading the officials to let her daughter be brought home one last time. But no one listened.
If you are the one who doesn’t see any problem with how we treated this 19-year-old, then probably you are the problem.
If you are still trying to justify it by saying – “Aisa toh India mein hota hi rehta hai” or blaming the victim or her family for what they are going through – then you are the culprit too. Because how we devoid her of respect both when she was alive and when she was dead, says a lot about us.
And for those who are feeling the pain of this daughter and her family, we know you are angry.
We know you want society to change. We know you don’t want another daughter to go through what this young girl had to. We know you want justice. We know you want better laws and speedy justice. But sadly, the laws alone won’t be able to bring change. It’s you and us who can! If you can raise your son to see women as equal; if you can raise him to show her the respect that she deserves, we believe that would be the first step to make a society that would know how to respect women! We will! Will you?