What's The Truth of Hathras? Here Are The Questions The Court Verdict Answers And The Ones It Raises

It was a love affair gone horribly wrong for reasons no one knows, it was not murder as the intention was not to kill the girl, and she lied in some measure in her dying statements — this is how a court last week settled the 2020 Hathras case.

The victim’s family is now appealing to the Allahabad High Court against what it told News18 was “a travesty of justice”, while the Central Bureau of Investigation’s stance is unknown. “The maxim falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus (false in one thing, false in everything) is not being used in India…it is the duty of the court to separate the grain from the chaff,” the 167-page trial court judgement said, acquitting three of the four accused and ruling there was no rape. One accused, Sandeep, was booked for culpable homicide not amounting to murder and sent to jail for life.

The case of the Dalit girl’s alleged murder in 2020, and her hurried cremation at midnight, had become a major political flashpoint with Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra marching to her house in Bulgarhi village in Hathras. The CBI charge-sheeted four persons for her rape and murder. But the court flagged the possibility of the girl being influenced by her family members and others to implicate three of the four accused and make rape charges. “The case took a political colour with politicians meeting the family,” the court said.

Girl’s 6 statements

The girl made six separate statements before her death. Two of them to journalists at the police station on the day of the incident on September 14, 2020, the third to a journalist at a hospital the same day, the fourth to the police on September 19, the fifth again to the police on September 22, and her last one to a magistrate on the same day. She died a week later.

The court judgement notes that she named only one accused, Sandeep, and made no rape charges in the first four statements, including the one to the police on September 19. But on September 22, in her fifth statement (and second to the police), she made gang-rape charges against four persons. In her last statement to a magistrate, she named the four persons again but this time did not mention the rape charges.

The court cited these statements to say neither the rape charges could be believed nor the involvement of the three others. “If there were four men involved and there was rape, she would have told the three journalists. Even after five days to the police, she repeated that only one person was involved and there was no rape,” the judgement said.

The court disbelieved her September 22 statement to the police and did not entirely believe her statement to a magistrate. The court said the girl’s medical examination and all other forensic evidence did not prove rape. This led to only Sandeep being punished in the case and the three others, including two of Sandeep’s relatives, and a neighbour, walking free. The girl’s family is now challenging this logic of the court.

Love affair?

The judgement says that Sandeep and the girl had close relations and spoke a lot on the phone. The CBI’s investigating officer told the court that evidences had come to the fore that the two had a love affair, that Sandeep had given her expensive gifts, and that both families were against the affair. Sandeep in fact argued for his innocence before the court asking why he would kill a girl whom he loved so much.

The court, however, noted that the girl in each of her six statements had named Sandeep as the attacker and though there were no witnesses to the crime, his role was found clear. But the court noted that the girl’s injuries did not show strangulation marks all around the neck but only on the front and an injury due to sudden impact or a forceful jerk. It also cited the girl’s survival for nearly a fortnight after the incident to rule that Sandeep’s intention was not to murder.

The court sentenced Sandeep to life imprisonment under section 304 (part 1) instead of section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code and he escaped a possible death sentence. The family of the girl is challenging this verdict demanding a death sentence against Sandeep and questioning why the court disbelieved the girl’s six statements that all said Sandeep had tried to murder her.

The families of the three acquitted persons meanwhile ask who will compensate them for the two-and-a-half years that they spent in jail. They also say it was all a plot by politicians and the media for eyeballs to instigate the victim’s family to make the case sound more sensational and seek more compensation.

Will the truth of Hathras ever be known? It is now over to the Allahabad High Court and another long legal battle may lie ahead.

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