A special Uttar Pradesh court earlier today acquitted three – Ramu, Lavkush, and Ravi while convicting Sandeep of culpable homicide in the Hathras case. Sandeep was also convicted of offences under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
The accused have not been convicted of rape, advocate Mahipal Singh told reporters outside the court. Singh said the victim’s family planned to appeal against this decision before the Allahabad High Court.
Sandeep, the sole convict was sentenced to life imprisonment and a ₹50,000 fine.
The special court’s decision comes more than two years after news of the alleged gang-rape of a 19-year-old Dalit girl by four upper-caste men in Hathras rocked the nation. Two weeks after her alleged rape on September 14, 2020, the girl succumbed to her injuries in Delhi’s Safdarjung hospital. In an unusual move, the UP police on September 30 forcibly cremated the girl’s body without parental consent or their presence.
On October 10, 2020, Allahabad High Court transferred the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and two months later, the probe agency filed its chargesheet in the case.
This story has been updated.