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New Delhi, September 17 (KMS): The Congress has said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) are giving communal color to the alleged rape and murder of two Dalit sisters in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri and demanded that justice delivery in the case be fast-tracked.
The party also demanded the Narendra Modi government should implement the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act with “full force,” reports PTI.
Two teenage sisters were found hanging from a tree in a sugarcane field located about a kilometer from their house in Lakhimpur Kheri’s Nighasan police station limits. Six people were arrested on Thursday.
Addressing a press conference at the Congress headquarters in New Delhi, the party’s Scheduled Caste department head Rajesh Lilothia said the alleged rape and murder of the two sisters should not be seen as an isolated incident and alleged that atrocities against Dalits have been rising. The National Crime Records Bureau data revealed that 70,818 cases of atrocities against Dalits were pending investigation till 2021, he said.
“On one hand, big claims are made that the Modi government is working for the welfare of Dalits, on the other hand there are these statistics,” Lilothia said.
He also accused the RSS and BJP of giving communal color to the Lakhimpur Kheri incident.
The Congress demands justice from the UP government for the family of the victims, he said, addig that it also demands that the Modi government should implement the SC/ST Act with full force.
The Congress leader also accused the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh of not providing justice in the 2020 Hathras rape case. A Dalit woman died in Hathras after she was gang-raped by upper caste Hindus.
