This had become imperative as it was impairing the image of his government and at the same time smearing the face of his most trusted lieutenant Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. The best course open for Modi was to counter the crime by raising the bogey of nationalism.

While inaugurating the Atal Tunnel, the longest highway tunnel in the world, built at an altitude of 3,000 meters at Rohtang, Modi accused the Congress of compromising with the Defence Interests of the country. He said that the protection of our country is the most important thing. “Nothing more important to us than protecting country, but there was an era when defense interests were compromised, Atal Ji laid the foundation stone of the approach road of this tunnel in 2002. Till 2013-2014, progress was made only on 1,300 meters of this tunnel. After 2014, the project progressed at an unprecedented pace.”

His accusation that their governments kept "playing around with files" and delayed procurement of fighter jets, arms, ammunition and other strategic equipment has wider implication. He was aware that Congress was spearheading the attack on Yogi government in the matter of Hathras rape and brutal killing of the victim. Obviously to deflect the people’ attention from the heinous crime he raised the issue of defence compromise.

No doubt he could have raised this issue a day later but it was his shrewd move to coincide it with Rahul and Priyanka’s visit to Hathras. Since he has been surviving on Nehru-Gandhi bashing this has not come as a surprise.

The most shocking has been the silence of Modi; his refusal to criticise this heinous act. On the contrary he has been resorting to his old dirty tactics of highlighting the issue of nationalism to confuse the people and divert their attention.

Listen to what he did say on that occasion; "Nothing is more important for us than the defence of the country.” Yes he is right. Rape and killing of dalit girls does not matter for him as his RSS guru Savarkar had justified rape as a political weapon to silence the detractors. In this case the Rajputs of UP raped a dalit girl to silence them. Strange is the way of Modi. He has been maintaining ominous silence in the matter of agricultural laws, but on day he expressed his concern for the farmers.

The Rajput strongman Ajay Mohan Bisht was voted twice in two years as the nation’s best chief minister. Bisht is none else but the chief of a Hindu math, a yogi, a person who has supposedly renounced earthly luxuries, the materialism, in Gorakhpur of Uttar Pradesh with a number of criminal cases against him. Ever since he became the chief minister of UP he has been embracing controversies for his unsavoury actions.

With the opposition in Uttar Pradesh behaving like a maid to the ruler, Bisht, the Rajput lord has turned autocrat and has been trampling the rule book and even the Constitution to suit his personal interest and satisfy his ego. It was his image of a muscleman that made Narendra Modi, who by then had become the prime minister of India, to install him as the chief minister of UP. Ever since he became the chief minister, the state has witnessed tremendous rise in the number of cases of murder and rape. Just after taking charge of the state he had issued diktat to teach lessons to the Romeos. A number of criminals from backwards castes were killed by the police. This witnessed the state police turning into a force of mercenaries.

His grip on the bureaucrats and the administration could be judged from the simple fact that his officers went to extreme to deny that the 19-year-old dalit Valmiki girl was gagged, raped and bludgeoned by upper caste criminals in Hathras, barely 200km southeast of Delhi. Her tongue was cut and spine was broken which made her paralysed.

Just after news of the savagery broke the authorities damn it as “fake news”. Though for a fortnight she survived the multiple assaults and the slur of official lies the officials continued to ignore her. This is the truth of Adityanath’s realm. Once she dies she is bundled to Hathras and her body is burnt to ashes in the midnight. In a state which is ruled by the Hindu zealot , the Hindu rituals are given the nasty burial. Against the prevailing Hindu religious ethics her body is burnt in the dead of the night in the absence of her parents and other family members. It is tough to comprehend what actually Bisht’s police was trying to conceal.

The most shocking act of Bisht was his refusal to allow Gandhi siblings from meeting the parents of the girl. The instruction was so intrinsic that a male police officer caught Priyanka’s shirt by collar. This act of the police officer needs a thorough probe, to find out as to who had given him permission to lay his hand on a lady. It is national shame. One cannot imagine that Modi and his cohorts would stoop so low that they would forget the morality and decency and indulge in such a cowardice act.

After meeting the family members of the victim, Priyanka and Rahul had rightly observed “UP government is morally corrupt". Had it not been the case the police officers should not have tried to bury the entire matter and give a clean chit to the rapists. It is strange that it took eight days according to the victim’s family, for the police to invoke the charge of gang rape and five days to arrest the suspects.

In the entire melee the most disgusting has been the attitude of the television news channels. They provided the minimal coverage of the protest. In contrast a much smaller hunger strike by some people who allege that actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death in June was murder, not suicide was given much prominence. This reflect the worst kind of degeneration of the Indian media. Ever since Modi came to power he has been assiduously trying to silence the media, now this apathy of the media towards Hathras incident bears the clear signthat he has succeeded in his ulterior design.

CPI general secretary D. Raja said. “India cannot continue like this. The whole country is agitating for human rights and dignity. Adityanath cannot continue as CM. I appeal to the President (Ram Nath Kovind), who is from UP. He must intervene. He knows what’s happening. I can’t expect (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi to intervene and set things right.”

While the Bisht government was resorting to all kind of tactics to suppress the voice of protest, it was also involved in tapping of the phones of journalists covering the incident. The India Today group issued a statement alleging the tapping and leak of a phone conversation between one of its reporters and the victim’s brother, and demanded an explanation from the government. Incidentally India Today extends full moral support to Modi’s actions.

“India Today first asks why was the telephone of our reporter, who was covering the Hathras murder, being tapped? If it was (the brother’s) phone that was being tapped, then the government needs to answer why are the phones of the grieving victim’s family under surveillance or being tapped. And under what provision of law were the phones tapped and call recordings leaked by officials who had access to these recordings.”

Bisht has said that he would constitute a SIT team to look into all issues raised by the family of the 19-year-old Dalit woman in Hathras, and the strictest action will be taken against the culprits. But people ofUP know how Bisht’s SITs operate. They have no faith in what Bisht says.

The same demand has been echoed by a section of the senior government officials. This is ridiculous. Narco tests are carried out on the accused persons not on the victims. Raising this issue at this juncture simply implied that they are confident of manoeuvring the report in their favour and prove the victims as liers.

The 100 odd retired bureaucrats who had written an open letter to Yogi Adityanath, expressing pain at the “constant plumbing the depths of depravity and callousness in governance” and demanding punishment for the officials who had failed the Hathras rape victim must be feeling ashamed at this moral decline of their serving fraternity guys.

The officers also told Yogi; “your actions over the past three-and-a-half years give us little reason to believe that your actions are motivated by respect for the rule of law. We urge you to conduct your administration in accordance with the letter and spirit of the Constitution of India, to which you have sworn allegiance when you assumed office,” the letter, written on behalf of Constitutional Conduct, a collective of retired civil servants, said.

The letter read; “Being a person attached to a persuasion of the Hindu faith, you would be well aware that Hindu customs require the nearest kin to offer agni to the mortal remains. Both the sacred traditions and the family’s pleas that they would perform the cremation in the morning were ignored.”

The letter expressed concern also about the “novel interpretations of fast-track justice” on Yogi Adityanath’s watch. “In recent days, we have seen two instances where alleged criminals have met their deaths while being transported by the police to Uttar Pradesh. Even if they were guilty of the offences listed against them, they were entitled, under the Constitution of India and the laws of the land, to a fair trial. Denial of this right amounts to violation of Article 21 of the Constitution,” it said. (IPA Service)