NCW sends notices to Digvijay Singh, Amit Malviya and Swara Bhasker for revealing identity of Hathras victim

The National Commission for Women (NCW) on Tuesday issued separate notices to BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya, Congress leader Digvijay Singh and actress Swara Bhasker seeking explanation from them for revealing the identity of the Hathras gang-rape victim on Twitter.

They have also been asked to immediately remove the posts and refrain from transmission of such pictures of videos on social media as they are widely circulated by their followers on social media, which is prohibited by law.

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The NCW notice cited the Supreme Court order barring the disclosure of identity. The apex court had said the bar on disclosure under Section 228A(2) of the Indian Penal Code was not confined to just the name of the victim but actually meant that the "identity of the victim should not be discernible from any matter published in the media".

The 19-year-old girl, who was gang-raped by four men in Uttar Pradesh's Hathras on September 14, succumbed to her injuries later at Delhi's Safdarjung hospital.

Amid claims by the UP Police that the girl was not sexually assaulted, Malviya had posted a 48 second video of the girl on Twitter, claiming that it was an "interaction with a reporter outside AMU where she claimed there was an attempt to strangulate her neck".

Also read — UP CM should have decency to call Hathras incident a tragedy: Rahul

A controversy has erupted over whether the girl was sexually assaulted with forensic reports claiming that there was no sign of rape while experts said the samples were collected on the 11th day of the incident and it would not indicate sexual assault. In her dying declaration, the experts said, the girl had said that she was raped and it would have precedence over anything else.

In its notices to Singh and Bhasker he NCW said the pictures of the victim were posted on Twitter by them.

On Monday, the NCW had issued a notice to UP police over the manhandling of Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra while she was on her way to Hathras to meet the family of a woman who died after she was allegedly gang-raped.

"@NCWIndia condemns the alleged manhandling of Priyanka Gandhi by police while she was on her way to Hathras. This insensitive behaviour is totally unacceptable. Considering the sensitivity of the matter, our Chairperson @sharmarekha has sought a reply from @dgpup at the earliest," the NCW tweeted.

The incident had occurred at the Delhi-UP border on Saturday afternoon when Priyanka along with her brother and former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and other Congress leaders was on her way to Hathras to meet the victim's family.

During a scuffle involving Congress workers and police, a helmet-wearing policeman had held the Congress General Secretary by her kurta.