UN deplores rape, hanging in India

The United Nations has condemned the rape and hanging of two girls in northern India’s Uttar Pradesh state last month, expressing contempt at the state leadership for insensitive remarks.    The girls, 14 and 15 years of age, from the tiny village of Katra, ‎disappeared on the night of May 27 after going into the fields near their home to relieve ‎themselves, ‎since their house has no toilet.  ‎The following morning their corpses were found hanging from ‎a mango tree. ‎ ‎“I was especially appalled by the brutal rape and gruesome murder of two teenaged women in India ‎who had ventured out because they did not have access to a toilet," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday in New York at the launch of a video campaign against sexual violence.   Ban criticized the state’s Samajwadi Party leader, Mulayam Singh Yadav, who during the recent election campaign is said to have taken a conciliatory stand towards rapists saying, “boys will be boys."  Ban condemned the attitude as dismissive and destructive.   Mulayam’s son Akhilesh Yadav the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh under the Samajwadi Party banner, taunted reporters over the rape case, saying  "Aren't you safe? You're not facing any danger, are you? Then why are you worried? What's it to you?"  The U.N. has been especially critical of India in the wake of the Delhi gang rape of 2012 and sent its Special Rapporteur on violence against women, Rashida Manjoo, to prepare a report for the U.N. Human Rights Council in April 2014 that was very critical of India’s “systemic failures” in curbing sexual violence.