Priyanka Gandhi meets victim's kin

Unnao: Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Saturday met family members of the Unnao rape victim, who died after being set ablaze, and accused the Uttar Pradesh government of patronising criminals that led to recurrent crimes against women in the state.

Alleging that the BJP government had created such circumstances that there was no fear in the minds of criminals in the state, she urged the government and the administration to take seriously the issue of violence against women.

"They (the BJP government) are saying that there is no place for criminals in UP. But the way in which anarchy has spread and crime against women is taking place in the state, I wonder if in the Uttar Pradesh made by them there is any place for women," she said while talking to reporters after meeting the deceased woman's family members at their house here.

The Congress leader, who was on a visit to Lucknow, rushed here to meet the victim's family following news of her death at a hospital in Delhi due to the 90 per cent burns she suffered after being set afire here allegedly by five persons, including two accused of raping her.

Priyanka Gandhi told reporters that during the meeting, the victim's family members narrated to her their ordeal of being harassed for a long time by their daughter's perpetrators.

"A young girl (from the victim's family) was threatened that her name will be struck off from school, so she did not dare to go to school. The (girl child's) father was beaten up, and their agriculture field set ablaze in June. The family was tortured in every possible way. After that, all these things happened," Gandhi claimed.