Chandigarh: In a shocking incident, a woman from West Bengal was gangraped by two men while she was on her way to join the farmer’s protest at Tikri, near the Delhi border. She later died with COVID-19 symptoms at a hospital in Haryana.
The matter came to the fore after the 25-year-old woman’s father filed the FIR. Police said they have formed a team to track down the two accused. According to the complaint, the woman came to Tikri from West Bengal April 10 along with a group to join the farmers’ protest against new farm laws.
She was admitted to a hospital in Jhajjar district with Covid symptoms April 26, the police said. “She died April 30,” Bahadurgarh police officer Vijay Kumar said, adding the woman’s father then filed a case of rape against two men.
Quoting the complaint, Mr Kumar said she was raped by the two men of a group that came to support the farmers’ protest. The woman narrated the ordeal to her father on phone, the police officer said.
“She died during treatment. The hospital authorities have told us they treated her as a Covid patient. We have applied for documents, which are awaited and only after we get them can we confirm if her death was Covid-related,” Mr Kumar said.
The Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), which is spearheading the protest against the farm laws, and whose members are at Tikri, in statement said it will “take this fight for justice to its logical conclusion”.
“This case concerns a woman who came from Bengal to join kisan movements along with some persons posing to be ‘Kisan Social Army’. She was assaulted by some of these persons on the way to Delhi and after reaching Tikri border… When this came to the notice of the SKM, we decided to take strictest possible action. Four days ago, the Tikri committee of SKM had already removed the tents and banners of the so-called ‘Kisan Social Army’,” the farmers’ body said in the statement.
