Summary: Massive outrage had followed the Nirbhaya gang-rape, bringing ordinary folks out on to the streets of Delhi. They were demanding justice, demanding accountability, demanding a change in the rape laws. The outrage was unprecedented. The BJP was in the opposition then. Everyone attacked the Congress government in Delhi and Sheila Dikshit did pay a heavy political price. Fast forward to now, to 2018, six years later, this is the story of 8-year-old Asifa, who was kidnapped by a group of men in a plot to drive out her Muslim Bakerwal community from the village in Kathua where they were living. The police chargesheet will make your hair stand on end. In fact, it will make you sick. Asifa was drugged, she was tied up, then repeatedly raped over the course of one week inside a temple. She was then strangled and her head smashed with a stone before her body was dumped. The case was handed over the crime branch, which in its chargesheet has also gone after four of their own men for rape, murder and for covering up the crime. But instead of outrage that such a ghastly crime had happened, two senior BJP ministers in the state government actually attended a rally supporting the accused. The Jammu BAR Association, which has links to both the BJP and the Congress, has extended till the 17th a strike it called demanding a CBI probe. They say the Jammu and Kashmir Police can't be trusted. Yes, this is the BAR Association, the men and women who should be upholding the law, now shamelessly defying it as they did when they physically tried to stop the police from filing a chargesheet. And in all of this, not a word from India's women ministers, not a word from Sushma Swaraj, Smriti Irani, Nirmala Sitharaman, and not a word from the Prime Minister. What will it take to get you to speak Mr Prime Minister? Why don't you say something?
