Priyanka Gandhi gives voice to people’s anger against Yogi govt for failure to protect women

“Yeh inteha ho rahi hai zulm ki” (The tyranny has crossed all the limits), Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra wrote in a tweet on Saturday after visiting the village of the rape victim who succumbed to her burns lamenting poor law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh.

“It is shameful. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath should clarify with whom his government is standing – with the women or the perpetrators of the crime,” she further wrote.

What Priyanka tweeted reflects the mood of the people. A seething anger is brewing among the masses against the government and its failure to protect women. Even the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) data shows that crime against women are on the rise in Uttar Pradesh.

The NCRB records say that Uttar Pradesh accounted for 15.6 per cent of all the crimes against women reported in the whole of country under the Indian Penal Code as well as those reported under special laws. This translates into a crime rate of 53.2 per cent (number of crimes reported/population).

The NCRB records say that in 2017 3.4 lakh crime against women were reported across the country of which 56,000 were from Uttar Pradesh only.

But the NCRB does not include the figures or the cases which have not been reported in the rural areas. The experts believe that what is reported is just the tip of the iceberg as number of cases are going up almost every year.

The figure justify the claim. As compared to previous years over 6749 more cases of crime against women were reported in 2017 as against 2016 which is over 20,000 cases more that of 2015.

The most reported crime against women include assault on woman with intent to outrage her modesty, kidnapping and abduction and rape. In Uttar Pradesh, kidnapping and abduction are the most reported, followed by assault on woman with intent to outrage her modesty, cruelty by husband/relatives and kidnapping and abduction to compel for marriage.

Here are the highlights of the crime against women:

Lucknow comes only behind Patna in reporting dowry deaths. Kanpur is the other metropolitan city that reported the same percentage of dowry deaths.

On the metropolitan city count, Lucknow is only second (behind Delhi) in number of assaults with intent to outrage modesty of women.

The four metros that reported the most cases for kidnapping and abduction with intent to force for marriage, three (Kanpur, Ghaziabad and Lucknow) are in Uttar Pradesh. Patna reported the most number of such crimes.

The irony with Uttar Pradesh is despite it is topping the list of crime against women the state has lagged behind in the utilisation of Nirbhaya Fund meant for the safety of women.

In a recent data released by Department of Women and Child Development, Uttar Pradesh has utilised just 3.29 per cent of the money under the Nirbhaya Fund.