This time, BSP supremo Mayawati, broke from her tradition of not visting crime scenes and flew into the village to meet the bereaved family. Before flying off in a private chopper she held a presser to claim that it was her sustained pressure that forced the SP government to okay a CBI probe into the incident as demanded by the family of the victims.
She also conveniently forgot that visits by Congress and SP leaders to meet and console rape victims and their families during her stint as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh had drawn sharp rebuke from her. She even termed as "nautanki" (drama) every time some opponent dropped by to meet rape victims. Five of her party's legislators were named in FIRs for allegedly committing rapes.
For the Samajwadi Party (SP) government in the state, incidents of rapes continue to be treated with shameful trivialism.
Soon after the Badayun incident, a senior police officer, speaking on behalf of the state government said, almost casually, that rapes happen at a rate of 10 per day in the state. He seemed to question, rather brazenly on why there was so much media glare on the Badayun incident or, for that matter, a series of rapes that happened thereafter in Azamgarh, Etawah and Aligarh. He also blamed the "lack of toilets" in the countryside for the rise in rapes and molestations.
