A man has been arrested for the third time in Uttar Pradesh on Saturday for kidnapping a minor girl whom he had raped in 2021. The accused, identified as Golu, was out on bail after rape charges were pressed against him for raping a then-15-year-old girl.
The girl’s father had registered a complaint against the accused, 23-year-old Golu, on Friday after he kidnapped the girl, who is now 17 years old, on April 2. Following this, Golu was arrested by the police on Saturday near Kandhiya Gate.
Golu was accused of raping the minor girl in 2021 after a complaint was registered against him on October 19 of the same year. He was imprisoned following the complaint but was released on bail last year.
On March 25, 2023, Golu threatened the girl’s father to withdraw the case and attacked him. The father who sustained injuries filed a police complaint against Golu. Following this, another case was registered, and Golu was again arrested on March 27 and sent to prison.
UP Rape Accused Kidnaps Minor Girl
However, he was soon released on bail, and this time he kidnapped the minor girl on April 2. He was finally arrested again for the third time on Saturday. This entire ordeal raises the question of whether the law was lenient on the accused. Why was the accused even granted bail for the first time? He had raped a minor girl, and shouldn’t that be a non-bailable offence? Under what guarantee was he released when there was the possibility of the accused harming the girl? Why was the accused granted bail once again even after attacking the girl’s father, which proved that his presence outside was unsafe for the girl?
It's spine-chilling to even imagine the agony the girl had to endure when she was abducted by her rapist and had to face him again. That’s a 17-year-old kid we are talking about! Imagine the lifelong scar this would leave on her! Would she ever be able to recover from this traumatic ordeal?
How will women raise their voices against the crimes if their safety is at stake? This incident is sending a highly misleading message that rape accused can use loopholes in the law, come out on bail, and attack the survivor yet again! In the absence of steadfast protection from the law, won't perpetrators keep committing crimes, fueling violence against women?
Just recently, we saw one of the rape accused in the Bilkis Bano case sharing the stage with BJP MLAs at an event. The accused were all released on the grounds of "good behaviour." When instances like this happen, it only sends a message to abusers that there is always a chance to get off easily. The accused gets back into society and leads a normal life, but the survivors live the rest of their lives traumatised and scarred. They live with the fear of the possibility of being attacked anytime by the perpetrators.
The justice system let women down again in the Hathras rape case when it acquitted three out of the four accused of rape and murdering a young Dalit woman. One of the accused was convicted of "culpable homicide not amounting to murder." This case, which was as ghastly as the Nirbhaya case, happened in Uttar Pradesh.
According to the 2021 National Crime Records Bureau report, Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of crimes against women in India. The National Commission for Women received nearly 31,000 complaints in 2022, out of which 15,828 were from Uttar Pradesh. Despite this, how is it right for the state to let a rape accused on bail twice despite his presence outside proving to be dangerous?
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Views expressed by the author are their own
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