Shameful Cases In Uttar Pradesh
By A Special Correspondent
First publised on 2026-05-26 05:51:50
About the Author
Within days of each other, two cases of rape and exploitation emerged from Uttar Pradesh â one from Lucknow, one from Varanasi. The victims were a 19-year-old and a 12-year-old. The perpetrators were ordinary men going about their business. And the system â the laws, the institutions, the social fabric â did what it usually does. It arrived late, noted the facts, and filed papers.
India has some of the most stringent laws against sexual violence in the world. The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act of 2013, passed in the wake of national outrage, redefined rape, expanded its scope, and stiffened penalties. The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act mandates child-friendly investigation, fast-track courts, and special protection mechanisms. On paper, this country is serious about these crimes. On the ground, a 12-year-old can be sold by her own mother, trafficked across state lines, and abandoned near a railway station before anyone notices she is missing.
Consider the Varanasi case first, because it deserves to be considered at length, and with full discomfort. A mother in Bihar sold her daughter â twelve years old â for â¹16,000 and ten saris. The buyer, a 40-year-old widower from Chandauli, invested approximately â¹90,000 in a hair transplant in Delhi. The purpose of that investment was to look younger. The purpose of looking younger was to deceive a child into a sham marriage at a temple. He then repeatedly raped her and put her to work as domestic help. When she ceased to be useful, or perhaps convenient, he abandoned her near Banaras railway station on May 19.
She was then found by an auto driver named Ravi Verma. He did not help her. He raped her near a pond and dumped her on May 21. She was found wandering and crying in Sarnath. Locals alerted the police. The Child Welfare Committee recorded her statements. Arrests followed on Saturday â the mother, the auto driver. The original buyer, Lahru Yadav alias Rakesh, one presumes, is also being pursued.
Pause here. A man spent â¹90,000 on cosmetic surgery to make himself presentable to a child he had purchased. This is not a crime of impulse. This is not a moment of weakness. This is a transaction, planned across weeks, involving money, travel, grooming, and deliberate deception. And the child's own mother was the seller. POCSO prescribes rigorous imprisonment of not less than ten years for aggravated penetrative sexual assault on a child below twelve years. The sale of a child for trafficking under the Indian Penal Code â now the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita â carries severe punishment as well. All of that is text. The girl spent days being raped, then days abandoned, before the law found her.
The Lucknow case is different in character but identical in architecture. A 19-year-old student from Jaunpur, a UPSC aspirant, was travelling to Delhi. At Charbagh station, she was recognised by an old acquaintance, Shivam Yadav, accompanied by Sunny Yadav. She was persuaded off the train. She was taken to a room in Sushant Golf City. Her cold coffee was spiked. She was raped multiple times while drowsy. The assaults continued until May 18, now involving a third unidentified man. She was told she would be killed if she spoke. She was dropped at Lucknow station on May 18, reached Delhi's Anand Vihar, and was spotted by railway police who took her for a medical examination. Rape was confirmed. A Zero FIR was filed on May 19 in Delhi. The case was transferred to Lucknow on May 23. Three accused have been booked.
She was on her way to study for an examination that selects the people who will run this country. The men who pulled her off that train knew exactly what they were doing.
What links these two cases is not geography or the identity of the perpetrators. What links them is the casual confidence with which violence was planned and executed. The hair transplant man planned for weeks. Shivam Yadav knew her train, knew her, knew what he intended. Nobody in either chain of events appears to have believed, even for a moment, that the law would reach them in time to matter. They were, in both cases, nearly right.
The law did eventually arrive. FIRs were filed. Arrests were made. Sarnath ACP Vidush Saxena confirmed the investigation. These are facts that should be noted without irony. Police response, where it occurred, was not entirely absent. But arrival is not the same as deterrence. The question that neither a Zero FIR nor a chargesheet can answer is this: why did none of these men hesitate?
Part of the answer lies in investigation backlogs, delayed trials, and low conviction rates for sexual offences â a combination that renders legal consequence theoretical rather than real for a large class of offenders. Part of it lies in the social contempt for female autonomy that makes a UPSC aspirant on a train appear to some men as an opportunity rather than a person. Part of it lies in the poverty that allowed a mother to assess her daughter's value in saris and small notes.
The 2013 amendments were born of rage. They were passed quickly, under pressure, in the glare of a nation that had briefly decided it was ashamed of itself. Fifteen years on, a twelve-year-old is sold in Bihar, trafficked to Chandauli, abandoned in Varanasi, assaulted again by a stranger who found her crying near a pond, and discovered by locals in Sarnath. The chain has seven links. At each link, the law that was supposed to protect her was absent.
India keeps writing better laws. The question it has still not answered is why the laws it already has keep arriving two weeks too late.
