UP govt not functioning as per Constitution, impose President's Rule: Ram Gopal Yadav

Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Ram Gopal Yadav on Saturday demanded the President's Rule be imposed in Uttar Pradesh for the state's failure to protect the Unnao rape victim.

"There can be no greater wrong than what happened in Unnao. We raised this issue in Parliament. I said in Parliament that any person with 90 per cent burns cannot survive. This is another incident in the long list of crimes against women in Uttar Pradesh," Yadav told reporters here.

"Section 356 has been framed in the Constitution so that in case a state government does not function as per the Constitution, then the government must be dissolved and the President's Rule should be imposed in the state," he added.

The Rajya Sabha MP said that the state government has failed in protecting the victim and her family and asserted that it had failed in ensuring justice in the other cases as well.

"No deterrent punishment has been given to any of the accused in all the cases to date. There were many accused who went unpunished because of their proximity to the state government. Had this government not been in place, then such incidents could not have happened," said Yadav.

After battling for life at Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital, the Unnao rape victim, who was set ablaze while on her way to a court hearing on Thursday morning, died at 11:40 pm on Friday.

On Thursday, the 23-year-old was airlifted from Lucknow's SMC Government Hospital to Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi.

According to the police, the five accused had allegedly thrown kerosene on the woman and set her ablaze when she was on her way to a local court for the hearing of a rape case she had filed in March.

The SP leader also expressed disappointment over the encounter killing of the four accused in the rape and murder of the veterinarian in Telangana.

"If the criminal is absconding, then their encounter would not have been questionable. But the encounter happened in Telangana when the criminals were already in the police custody and would have got the punishment from the court. The public might have liked what has happened, but the judicial process must be followed in any case," said Yadav.