The incident acquires greater significance because the crime was committed in the well-guarded residential colony of National Thermal Power Corporation that runs a huge power generation plant in Unchahar town.
Dodging the police and media alike in Uttar Pradesh, Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi eventually surfaced suddenly in Nighasan town of Lakhimpur-Kheri district, about 170 km from Lucknow, to call on the family of the minor girl who was brutally done to death in the local police station premises exactly 19 days ago.
The Hindutva poster boy has lost his sheen following the BJP's poll reverses in Hindi heartland states and his style of governance, reports Virendra Singh Rawat.
Dhirendra Pratap Singh allegedly shot dead Jai Prakash Pal Gama, 46, on Thursday following a quarrel over the allotment of ration shops at Durjanpur village in Ballia's Reoti area. Senior administration and police officials were present at the meeting when the incident took place.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Bahujan Samaj Party president Mayawati on Sunday ordered suspension of her party MLA Purshottam Narain Dwivedi for his alleged involvement in the gang rape of a minor girl in a village of Banda district, abut 180 kilometers from Lucknow.
Taking on the Adityanath government over handling of protests against the amended Citizenship Act, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Sunday said it has "crossed all limits of inhumanity" and claimed party worker Sadaf Zafar was arrested on "baseless" charges.
Even as in a belated move, the State Human Rights Commission in Monday issued notice to the Mayawati government on the issue of rising crime against women, yet another rape of a minor girl was reported from Sitapur district, about 90 km from Lucknow, giving Uttar Pradesh the dubious distinction of a graph of six rapes in a single day.
A massive protest erupted in Delhi on Friday evening as a number of civil society activists, students, women and political leaders gathered at Jantar Mantar against the alleged gang rape and death of a young woman in Hathras district and the Uttar Pradesh government's response to it.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Saturday ordered a Criminal Investigation Department inquiry into the alleged rape of a minor girl by a ruling Bahujan Samaj Party member of Legislative Assembly and his supports in a village of Banda district, about 180 km from Lucknow.
The apex court will also decide whether the trial of the VVIP accused can be transferred from a court in Rae Bareli to Lucknow.
But the police campaign aimed at ensuring safety of women, especially young girls, was reportedly marked by some stray cases of harassment of innocent youths amid concerns that it could spawn moral policing.
Two of the men arrested for allegedly raping and murdering two cousins whose bodies were found hanging from a tree have confessed to the crime, the Uttar Pradesh police on Sunday said and asserted it was in the process of collecting "concrete" evidence to nail the culprits in court.
She is being given oxygen through a tube inserted in the windpipe. Her condition is stable but not out of danger, he said.
Eight police personnel, including a deputy superintendent of police, were gunned down in a village near Kanpur city by the henchmen of a criminal who lost two of them in a firefight later, officials said.
Defying prohibitory orders, protests were held in Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and several other cities. Protesters, mostly students and activists, were detained on a large scale in national capital and other places.
The scene of crime and the sequence of events were also not being recast by the state police, Central Bureau of Investigation sources said.
After battling for her life for almost 40 hours, the 23-year-old woman died following a cardiac arrest on Friday night at the Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi.
Overall, since January 1, as many as 144 encephalitis-related deaths have taken place in the hospital, they said.
From police refusing to name the accused when the complaint was first filed to seeing her father tortured and killed, from her uncle being ensnared in an unrelated case to suffering an accident, which had clear marks of a conspiracy, the going was tough for her.
A convict in the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts case, Jalees Ansari, who went "missing" while on parole, was arrested on Friday from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, an official said. Ansari (68), a Mumbai resident who was serving a life term in a Rajasthan jail, was nabbed in a joint operation by Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Sqaud and the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF), he said.
None of the political parties in UP has any effective plans to create jobs.
A 30-year-old woman's body was found near a village school in Uttar Pradesh's Mohanlalganj area. Sharat Pradhan reports that the victim was brutally stabbed and then left to bleed.
The apex court, however, noted that Rajasthan Governor Kalyan Singh enjoys Constitutional immunity and can be tried only after he ceases to hold the office.
Making such publication mandatory would invade in the fundamental rights of liberty and privacy, the Lucknow bench of Allahabad high court said.
Surat resident Ashfaq Shaikh, a prime suspect, allegedly replaced his colleague Rohit Solanki's photo on the latter's Aadhaar card with his own. He also changed the birth date on the Aadhaar card.
Since the trouble in Uttar Pradesh's ruling party became public, Akhilesh has been insisting on sidelining or expulsion of Singh.
Against the backdrop of the opposition closing ranks on the CAA issue and the BJP faring poorly in several state elections recently, the 2022 electoral battle is unlikely to be a cakewalk for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, reports Virendra Singh Rawat.
Irked at the media coverage on his stolen buffaloes and the subsequent suspension of three policemen, Uttar Pradesh minister Mohd Azam Khan said his cattle had become more famous than Britain's Queen Victoria.
The rape survivor suffered 90 per cent burns after five men, including two of the rape accused, allegedly set her on fire while she was on her way to court, police said.
'Uttar Pradesh, our largest state by population and the most powerful, is also the worst governed.'
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday paid a surprise visit to the Hazratganj Police Station to check the general preparedness.
'They (BJP) can claim of winning even 82 seats, despite the fact that Uttar Pradesh has only 80 seats'
The fact that so many victims turn hostile should be a matter of concern. If so many accused persons continue to roam freely in society, this becomes an additional liability to women's safety, points out Rashme Sehgal.
Senior Indian Police Service officer Amitabh Thakur, who is locked in a tussle with ruling Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and took his fight to the Centre, was on Monday night suspended by the Uttar Pradesh government.
'This is against the Constitution and we will oppose it tooth and nail.'
The six-time independent legislator said though he would be labelled anti-Dalit, he is only talking about equality.
'The BJP will never do anything substantial to empower Dalits.'
The trial court had awarded him the maximum punishment of life term with a rider that the convict will remain in jail for "remainder of his natural biological life" and also imposed an exemplary fine of Rs 25 lakh on him to be paid within a month.
The first encounter took place when a police team was approaching to arrest Vikas Dubey, a history-sheeter facing 60 criminal cases, in Dikru village under the Chaubeypur police station on the intervening night of Thursday and Friday, police said.
