‘We’ll do her last rites when the case is over’: Hathras family, one year later

On September 26, 2020, Newslaundry met Asha’s father at a hospital in Aligarh. His daughter had been gangraped 12 days before. He folded his hands and said, “My daughter keeps saying she wants to go home. Please save her. Please help us.”

Asha, a 19-year-old Dalit woman from Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras, died four days later. Four Thakur men were arrested and the trial is underway.

A year later, Newslaundry returned to Hathras to speak with Asha’s parents, brother and sister-in-law. They talked about how they’ve been, what they would like to say to prime minister Narendra Modi and chief minister Adityanath, and what justice means to them now.

“Everybody wants to keep us suppressed, keep us buried,” her family said. “We may be poor but we also have a right to fight for justice. It seems like a long road. But we have decided to fight.”

Watch.