Champawat police on Friday claimed that the alleged gang rape of a 16-year-old girl was the fallout of an “old enmity”, giving a clean chit to the accused at a time the Congress and the locals are organising protests against the Pushkar Singh Dhami government in Uttarakhand for protecting the perpetrators.

A farmer has accused three people, including former BJP divisional vice-president Puran Singh Rawat, of gang-raping his teenage daughter on May 5 when she had gone out with a family acquaintance to buy medicines and other items. The police had booked Vinod Kumar Rawat, Naveen Kumar Rawat and Puran Singh Rawat under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act after rescuing the trussed-up girl from a dairy on Wednesday.

Since then, protests have been held in several districts of Uttarakhand where a 19-year-old receptionist of a resort was murdered in 2022 for denying “special service” to a VIP guest. BJP leader Vinod Kumar Arya, the owner of the Rishikesh resort, was suspended after the incident. His son Pulkit Arya and two managers of the resort are serving life terms in the murder case.

Demonstrators gathered at a crossing in Pithoragarh town on the second consecutive day on Friday and burnt an effigy denoting the Dhami government, which they claimed was protecting the accused in the Champawat case.

Mukesh Pant, the Pithoragarh district president of the Congress, said: “The people organised the protests and we joined them because such incidents are routine for the BJP government. Every time, they start protecting their leaders instead of ensuring justice for the victims. Women are unsafe here.”

Pant alleged that a BJP leader was with the investigating team in Champawat when the probe was underway and evidence was collected.

“The BJP dictates to the police how to conduct an inquiry and whom to charge,”
he added.

Similar protests were organised in Udham Singh Nagar, Nainital and Rishikesh.

The victim had told the police that she had gone along with Vinod to buy medicines for her father.

“He misguided me and took me to Salli (in Champawat district), where he, his friend Naveen Singh Rawat and Puran Singh Rawat assaulted me and then tied me up with a rope,” she was quoted as saying to the Kotwali police in Champawat town.

Rekha Yadav, superintendent of police of Champawat, said: “The girl had willingly gone to a wedding. The named accused were not there at the time of the incident. The father of the girl has an old enmity with those whom he has accused of committing the crime.”

“There is also no apparent evidence of struggle and internal or external injury to the girl,” the officer added.

The police have arrested a person called Kamal Rawat and one other for hatching a conspiracy to implicate the three accused in the gang-rape case.

Ganesh Godiyal, the state Congress chief, said: “The fact remains that the girl is a minor and the police are constantly intimidating her. The police are determined to protect the accused because they have to protect the government.”