She lost her husband when Badka was five. Her eyesight is poor and, with sons working in Mumbai, she lives alone. The elder is an electrician while the younger a welder. “Allah knows what they have done, but I don’t know how I will live now,” she says amid sobs.

She says that after the crime, the police raided the house, misbehaved with her and threw things around. She has met her sons only once since the arrest.

Next, I ask a young man — he says he is 15 — standing outside Alisha’s house if he knows anything more about the accused. He says he lives in Mumbai and doesn’t know much.



Another man, who doesn’t give his name but gives his age as 25, says Chhotka was his classmate at the government primary school. “He used to steal guavas from the fields and thus earned the name ‘Aatankwadi’,” the man says, but offer nothing more. He claims no knowledge of the rape incident.

Incident Followed By A Similar One In Another District Of UP

The National Scheduled Castes Commission (NCSC) took suo motu cognizance of the case.



The next day, a special investigation team (SIT) was formed and five teams began searching for the absconding accused. A prize of Rs 25,000 was announced on them. The police decided to invoke the National Security Act against the accused.

On September 25, Mohammad Adil was arrested after an encounter with the police in which he got shot in both legs. The police recovered a revolver and a motorcycle from him. Within two days, the third accused, Akib, was arrested too.

SP Gupta said none of the three has any prior criminal record at the Sarai Akil station. He said he had not checked for similar record in Mumbai.

Around the same time of the Kaushambi incident, a strikingly similar crime was reported from Uttar Pradesh’s Rampur district. A Dalit woman had gone to fetch fodder in a field village when two men overpowered her at gunpoint, raped her in turns and filmed the act.



The video, again, was circulated and went viral.



The accused, Mohammad Naved and Mohammad Abdul, were arrested on September 26.