India / Adityanath has no moral right to continue as CM: Priyanka on UP gangrape

New Delhi: Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, amid national outrage over the dead-of-night cremation by Uttar Pradesh police of the woman who died of horrific injuries after being gang-raped and tortured, said Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had "no moral right" to continue in office.

“I was on the phone with the Hathras victim’s father when he was informed that his daughter had passed away. I heard him cry out in despair. He had just been telling me that all he wanted was justice for his child. Last night he was robbed of the chance to take his daughter home for the last time and perform her last rites,” Gandhi said in her first two tweets on the issue on Wednesday.

"He had just been telling me that all he wanted was justice for his child. Last night he was robbed of the chance to take his daughter home for the last time and perform her last rites....Instead of protecting the victim and her family, your government became complicit in depriving her of every single human right, even in death. You have no moral right to continue as Chief Minister," she tweeted.

The 19-year-old died in a Delhi hospital on Tuesday. The woman was admitted there in a critical condition after being brutally raped by four men in her village in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras district.

The incident took place on September 14. She was first admitted to JN Medical College and Hospital in Aligarh, but was shifted to Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital after her condition deteriorated where she breathed her last.

The UP government has been facing flak from Opposition parties over the issue. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav had said that “no hope” is left from the “insensitive government”.

In a video, the 20-year-old woman's father is seen breaking down while he was on the phone with Priyanka Gandhi. He handed over the phone to a relative sitting with him.

Priyanka Gandhi is heard asking whether arrangements had been made for the woman to be taken to her home for last rites. She also asks what the family would want.

"We want justice, we want the criminals to be hanged," the relative wept.