The house of the man accused of raping a teenage girl in Madhya Pradesh's Ujjain will be demolished tomorrow, as it was allegedly built illegally.
Videos of a 15-year-old girl, semi-naked and bleeding, going door-to-door for help, sparked outrage across the country last week.
The accused, Bharat Soni, an auto-rickshaw driver, was arrested in the case on Thursday. Bharat is currently in jail awaiting trial. His family has been living in the house on government land for years, the Ujjain Municipal Corporation said.
The NDTV report quoting Municipal Commissioner Roshan Singh said that the land belongs to the government and therefore no notice is needed for its demolition. The municipal body will take action tomorrow in collaboration with the Madhya Pradesh police.
Earlier, the father of the accused demanded capital punishment for his son, while the local bar association has also appealed that no lawyer should defend the accused in the court.
The opposition Congress, meanwhile, had targeted the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh over the incident and questioned the "silence" of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
“It is a shameful act. Neither have I gone to hospital to meet him, nor will I go to the police station or courts. My son has committed a crime, therefore he should be hanged,” his father had said.
Ujjain Bar Council president Ashok Yadav had said the incident had damaged the reputation of the temple city.
"We are appealing to our members not to take up the case of the accused," he had said.
Bharat Soni was arrested three days after a girl, aged about 12, was found walking on the city streets in injured condition.
Medical examination established that she had been raped.
Soni sustained injury when he allegedly tried to escape while being taken to the crime spot for investigation, police had said on Thursday. The girl is admitted to the Government Maharaja Tukojirao Holkar Women's Hospital in Indore where she underwent a major surgery last week.
A counsellor interacted with her and found that she belongs to the Satna district of MP. But she could not tell her name or address properly.
Police had said that a complaint about a girl of the same age going missing had been registered in Satna, but it was to be confirmed if the rape survivor was the same girl.
The Congress slammed the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh where assembly elections are due by the year-end.
Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate alleged that the law-and-order situation in the state had considerably deteriorated under Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
"In Madhya Pradesh, being a Dalit, tribal and woman has become a sin. Madhya Pradesh is number one in rapes of minors. Fifty-eight thousand rape cases and 68,000 kidnapping cases have been reported in 18 years of his (Chouhan's) rule. But the country's prime minister, home minister and all the BJP leaders are just sitting silent," Shrinate told reporters in Delhi.
She also questioned the "silence" of Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani, the National Commission for Women (NCW) and the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) over the incident.
Randeep Singh Surjewala, the Congress general secretary in charge of Madhya Pradesh, claimed that the attack on this "Dalit girl" was more brutal than that on the Nirbhaya case victim.
Surjewala also visited the Holkar Women's Hospital in Indore.
