Facts released with regards to an innocent eight-year-old girl’s kidnapping, gang rape and murder while she was compassionately out with her horse for grazing expose the nadir of Indian society. On January 10th, the girl, a resident of Kathua in India-occupied Kashmir, was allegedly lured by a 19-year-old boy whose name has oddly not been publicised. This began a series of corrupt actions by a former revenue officer and his accomplices to drive the girl’s Muslim community out of Kathua. The various players involved in the premeditated crime and murder included members of the police and government. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s sentiments of feeling ashamed at the release of these details are weak. The actors were members of the Bharatiya Janata Party and he has a duty to the world to not only publicly decry the crime but also ascertain that the men suffer nasty consequences for their depravity.
Whether Modi responded merely due to pressure from the UN chief’s statement, other countries or opposition leaders may be questioned. More pressure, however, needs to be put on him and the BJP to be answerable for the corrupted minds of its members. Until justice is dispensed, we will not be satisfied with the usual rhetoric that we in Pakistan are all too familiar with. We, too, are acquainted with lawyers being on the wrong side of justice, just as nationalist lawyers in this case provided protection to murderers and attempted to obstruct the legal process. And, of course, we discovered our own child sex rings which only recently received government denouncement.
This incident is of political significance since the victim was Kashmiri and her family was Muslim. Nevertheless, the intricate network that carried out and covered up the murder has been exposed and the world awaits a better response from New Delhi.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 16th, 2018.
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