2020 gangrape shadow fades, BJP confident of win in Hathras again

More than three years after a 19-year-old Dalit woman wasallegedly gangraped by four upper-caste men in Hathras, and died 11 days later in Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital in September 2020, the voters in her village are divided along caste lines. While the four families related to the victim are silent on their candidate preference, the others in her village – mostly upper caste – have declared their intention to vote for the BJP in the third phase of polling on May 7 for the SC-reserved Hathras Lok Sabha seat.

In March last year, a special court in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras district had convicted the main accused – Sandeep Singh – and acquitted the three others. The Uttar Pradesh government had ordered a CBI probe after the incident caused nationwide outrage.

In Hathras, locals refer to the incident as “bitiya kand” and people say the district that was earlier known for its production of heeng (asafoetida), Holi colours and gulal powders, shot to infamy after the incident.

But with the elections underway, no candidate is openly speaking about the incident. While the BJP has fielded state Revenue Minister Anoop Pradhan Valmiki, the other candidates include the Samajwadi Party’s (SP’s) Jasveer Valmiki and the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP’s) Hembaboo Dhangar.

The Dalits and Thakurs number an even 3 lakh each in the Hathras Lok Sabha seat, followed by 2 lakh Brahmins, 2 lakh Vaishyas and 80,000 Muslims. The upper caste votes, apart from the support for it by non-Jatav Dalits, mean the seat has long been a BJP bastion.

The party has won Hathras consecutively since 1991 – in 2009, the RLD won here as a BJP ally. The BSP finished runner-up in each poll between 1996 and 2014. In 2019, when the SP and BSP were allies, the SP’s candidate here