India: Police fired for not acting in rape case

Facing relentless media attention and growing criticism over two rapes earlier this week, state officials in northern India fired two police officers Friday for failing to investigate the disappearance of two teenage cousins, who were gang raped and later found dead, hanging from a tree.

The brutal attack – which took place on Tuesday evening in Uttar Pradesh as the teens went outside to use the toilet, because there was none in the home – has once again ignited public anger in India, where a string of high-profile rapes over the past few years has sparked nationwide protests and international criticism. 

India's Home Minister Rajnath Singh asked the state government of Uttar Pradesh to submit a report on the attack, a ministry spokesman said. The case is one of the first challenges for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his four-day-old government, and it highlights the ongoing struggle to stem sexual violence in India.

Modi, whose Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept 73 of the state's 80 parliamentary seats in its landslide general election victory, has not yet commented on the killings that took place.

Meanwhile, the father of one girl in the attack said he went to police the night of the attack to report them missing, but that they refused to help. On Thursday, officials suspended two local police officers for ignoring the father's pleas, and they were fired on Friday.

Maneka Gandhi, the country's new federal child welfare minister, said that every officer who had been involved in the case should be dismissed.

"Police [are] still not acting in the right direction. All policemen involved in the incident should be terminated," she told the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency, adding that she planned to set up a "rape crisis cell" to speed up legal action in such cases. 

"Police laxity is equally responsible for the incident due to which two girls lost their lives," Gandhi told PTI.

But in a country with a long history of tolerance for sexual violence, the firings also came as the state's top official mocked journalists for asking about the attack.

When a reporter asked about the lawlessness in Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav retorted: "You haven't been harmed, have you? No, right? Great. Thank you." He later called the attack "unfortunate" and called for fast-track courts "to ensure that the guilty are brought to book without the usual procedural delay," his spokesman said.  

The victims of the most recent deadly attacks were Dalits, a community once known as "untouchables" in India's caste system. Human rights activists have said that the case underlined how women from lower castes were particularly vulnerable.

"Members of dominant castes are known to use sexual violence against Dalit women and girls as a political tool for punishment, humiliation and assertion of power," said Divya Iyer of at Amnesty International India.

This week's incident has sent shock waves across the country, with students and women's rights activists taking to the streets in several cities. In the capital, New Delhi, protesters chanted slogans, seeking an end to the "rape culture" and demanding the resignation of the Uttar Pradesh government.

In a separate development, the mother of another rape victim in Uttar Pradesh was allegedly beaten by the father of the accused after her family refused to withdraw allegations against his son, police said Friday. The mother was critically ill in the hospital after suffering multiple fractures, police and medics said.

According to government statistics, about 25,000 rapes are committed every year in India, a nation of 1.2 billion people. But activists say that number is very low, since women are often pressed by family or police to stay quiet about sexual assaults.

Indian police and politicians, who for decades had done little about sexual violence, have faced growing public anger since the December 2013 gang-rape and murder of a young woman on a moving New Delhi bus – an attack that triggered national outrage over the treatment of women.

India revised its laws on sex attacks in the wake of that attack, including fast-track courts and doubling of prison terms for rape to 20 years. 

Al Jazeera and wire services