Unnao accident case: Loneliness of ‘victim family’

UNNAO: The jailed uncle of the Unnao rape survivor cremated his wife on the banks of the Ganga in their village on Wednesday, his forlorn figure and despairing voice mirroring the plight of a family left to fight its battles alone after losing three members in the span of just over a year.
“Kuldeep Singh Sengar (the rape-accused BJP MLA) mera poora parivar kha gaya, sirf hum hee reh gaye (Kuldeep destroyed my entire family, only I have remained),” he said, ringed by cops and watched from a distance by fear-struck villagers unwilling to have anything to do with the family.
An eerie silence had descended on the village, occasionally broken by the sirens of a 10-strong fleet of police vehicles, when the body of the rape survivor’s aunt arrived from Lucknow, three days after she and another relative were killed in a truck-car crash on NH-31 that also left the girl and her lawyer critically injured. In the past two years since the rape survivor named Sengar as the accused, nobody in the village had stood by the family.
Even their immediate neighbours turned into bystanders as the girl’s uncle carried out the cremation rituals. Kids passing by stared from far, perhaps unable to comprehend what was going on. “We don’t belong to this neighbourhood. We came here only to find out what this commotion is all about,” said Ram Khilawal, a resident of the village. “We don’t even pass through this side of the village. We take the other way for entry and exit, lest we be seen as supporting that family,” another said.
Perched on the edge of a mud porch, one among a row of men smoking bidis said he did not want to comment on what the rape survivor’s family had gone through. “We were not there on the highway to say if it was an accident or not. What should one say anyway? Everyone knows about everything going on here. It’s just that we don’t meddle.”
The survivor’s uncle said he had written several times to the authorities of Rae Bareli jail, saying he feared for his life there. Currently serving time in an attempt-to-murder case dating back to 2000, he wasn’t convicted until July 2 this year. He has sought a transfer to Unnao jail, citing threats by the henchmen of MLA Sengar in Rae Bareli. Rae Bareli jail superintendent R N Pandey told TOI that he was unaware of any letter written by the rape survivor’s uncle.
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References

1. ^{^} Unnao (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)

from Times of India https://ift.tt/2GGpfn4