Puri: Minutes after senior Biju Janata Dal (BJD) leader and Agriculture Minister Pradeep Maharathy quit the ministry on “moral” grounds in connection with his utterances regarding the Pipli gangrape and murder case, the father of the 19-year-old victim said, “If she was his (Maharathy’s) daughter, would he have said the same thing? His resignation will not deliver justice to my child.”
The victim’s mother too echoed similar sentiments and said the resignation is not enough to ensure justice for her daughter. “We want justice for my daughter, not minister’s resignation. What will we get with his resignation,” the bereaved mother told reporters.
She demanded “proper investigation by the CBI” and said that Pasia Pradhan, one of the two accused, “should be hanged to death.”
The victim’s brother too raised questions over the Crime Branch’s investigation.
“The case should be handed over to the CBI because we are not all satisfied with the Crime Branch’s lackadaisical way of investigation,” he said adding they wanted an impartial probe.
It may be mentioned here that in a 2018-survey by global experts, India was ranked as the world’s most dangerous country for women due to the high risk of sexual violence and being forced into slave labour.
War-torn Afghanistan and Syria were ranked second and third in the Thomson Reuters Foundation survey of about 550 experts on women’s issues, followed by Somalia and Saudi Arabia.
The only western nation in the top 10 was the United States, which ranked joint third when respondents were asked where women were most at risk of sexual violence, harassment and being coerced into sex.
The poll was a repeat of a survey in 2011 that found experts saw Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, India, and Somalia as the most dangerous countries for women.
The national government data showed that reported cases of crime against women rose by 83 per cent between 2007 and 2016, when there were four cases of rape reported every hour.