Hathras Rape Protests: UP Police Claim ‘International Plot’ To Defame Yogi Govt

Lucknow: In a fresh twist to the Hathras gang rape case, Uttar Pradesh Police claim to have uncovered an “international plot” to instigate riots along caste lines and defame the Yogi Adityanath government.

An FIR has been registered against unidentified persons at the Chandpa Police Station in Hathras under several sections of the IPC, including sedition, reports The Indian Express.

Sources said that a website, justiceforhathrasvictim.carrd.co, has been linked to the alleged ‘conspiracy’. The site, which listed do’s and don’ts on how to protect oneself during riots and in situations when police fire tear gas, is currently unavailable.

The sources further informed that most of the content has been lifted from literature used by Black Lives Matters protesters in the USA, which is available online.

The Indian Express has learnt that the FIR was registered under sections 109 (abetment if the act abetted is committed in consequence and where no express provision is made for its punishment), 120B (criminal conspiracy), 124A (sedition), 153 A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc, and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) and four of its sub-sections, 153 B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national-integration), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the IPC.

The chief minister had cautioned BJP workers, after attending a review meeting for upcoming by-elections to seven Assembly constituencies, of “conspiracies” against his government and urged them to “expose those who want to incite caste and communal riots” in the country and the state.

“Those who do not like development, they want to incite caste and communal riots in the country and state and want to stop development,” Adityanath said.

The Yogi government has been under fire since the death of a Dalit girl in a Delhi hospital, a fortnight after being brutally assaulted and allegedly gang-raped by upper caste men in Hathras.