Mamata Banerjee to hit streets today in protest against Hathras incident

Banerjee will walk from Birla Planetarium to Mahatma Gandhi's statue in the downtown of the city.

Banerjee's protest is going to take place a day after a delegation of her party Trinamool Congress (TMC) was denied an entry into Hathras and was allegedly misbehaved.

The delegation comprising TMC MPs Derek O'Brien, Dr. Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Pratima Mondal and former parliamentarian Mamata Thakur had traveled about 200 kms from Delhi but was stopped 1.5 kilometers from the victim's home in Hathras.

The Yogi Adityanath government has come under attack after the 19-year old, who belongs to the lowest rung of caste system prevailing in the north Indian state, was allegedly dragged by her dupatta, gangraped by four men, got her spinal cord damaged and her tongue cut.

Two weeks after the incident, which occurred on Sept 14, the girl succumbed to her injuries at a Delhi hospital on last Tuesday.

In an even more shocking incident, the dead body of the girl was cremated by police officials in the dead of night denying the family members a look at the victim for the last time in Uttar Pradesh, which is ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). 

Addressing a government programme in North Bengal a day ago, Banerjee equated the burning of the dead body of the girl with Sita's 'Agnipariksha'.

"As Goddess Sita had to go through 'Agni Pariksha', the Dalit woman who died after being gang-raped and brutalised in Hathras was put on a funeral pyre in the dead of the night," Banerjee said as quoted by media.

"In Uttar Pradesh, not only the victim was raped then her body was burnt. If there is a crime Police should investigate. What kind of rule is this?" she added.