“Come after you get raped”: a woman in Unnao says police refused to lodge her complaint on rape attempt

A woman in Hindupur village of Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao – the same place where a rape survivor had been set on fire and died later – has alleged that police refused to register her complaint on attempted rape.

The Hindustan Times reported this adding that the woman in her allegations said that police told her to get back to the police station with the complaint if she gets raped. “Rape to nahi hua, jab hoga tab ana,” (rape has not happened, come after you have been raped) a police allegedly told the woman in the police station.

She has been quoted in the report saying that three men from the village attempted to rape her some months back when she was on her way to buy medicines. She identified the accused – who she said were pulling off her clothes and tried to rape her – and went to lodge a complaint against them. But police refused to lodge her complaint and told her she could go back only after she had been raped. She has been visiting the police station for three months she said, but her case has not been registered. She has also alleged that the three men were constantly threatening to kill her.

Last Thursday, a young woman in Unnao had been set on fire by five men as she was going to the railway station to take a train for the hearing of the case that she had filed against the men who had raped her. Admitted to a local hospital, then taken to Lucknow and subsequently airlifted to a Delhi Hospital with 90 per cent injuries, she died two days later.

This has led to nation-wide anger and outrage, especially with several cases of rape being reported from across the country. A young veterinarian had been trapped by four truck drivers and cleaners and was gangraped and murdered earlier last week in Telengana. The police later arrested four men and all of them had been killed in what police claimed was an encounter as they tried to escape from custody.