Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday sharply questioned the Centre and the Uttar Pradesh government over the alleged gang-rape of a minor girl on a sleeper bus travelling from Greater Noida to Delhi, asking why safety rules introduced after the 2012 Nirbhaya case remain unenforced and whether there will be any accountability for the Delhi and UP police.
What happened
- A 16-year-old girl from Mainpuri, UP, boarded a sleeper bus in Greater Noida on a rainy night after mistakenly alighting at Pari Chowk while trying to reach her cousin in Noida’s Sector 63, police said.
- She alleges that the bus driver and conductor gang-raped her as the vehicle travelled about 47 km through the Noida-Greater Noida Expressway, Delhi’s Ring Road and the border, before throwing her out near Kashmere Gate in Old Delhi.
- Delhi Police registered an FIR and arrested both accused within hours of receiving the complaint, which was reported in the media on August 31, nearly four weeks after the August 4 incident.
In a post on X, Rahul Gandhi said Delhi-NCR has become “so unsafe for women” that a minor could be raped over a 47 km stretch without any police checkpoint stopping the bus, even as curtains were drawn across the windows to hide what was happening inside.
He asked why, years after Nirbhaya and many similar incidents, rules for checking and monitoring such buses are still not being followed, and accused the government of repeatedly “drawing curtains” over administrative failures. )
“Will there be any accountability for the Delhi police under Amit Shah, or the UP police under Adityanath? Not a chance — this crime, too, will just have a curtain drawn over it,” he wrote.
The case has reignited debate over enforcement of passenger-safety regulations for inter-city and NCR buses, especially in the capital region, and over why the incident remained out of public view for weeks despite occurring in the run-up to Independence Day under a heavy security presence.
