Rājānaka (𑆫𑆰𑆢𑆳𑆤𑆴)

What if Islam had never existed?

Her name was Priyadarshini Mattoo. She was 25 years old. A Kashmiri Pandit who had fled militancy in Srinagar with her family and rebuilt her life in Delhi. She was in the final semester of her LLB at Delhi University’s Campus Law Centre. Her senior in college was a man named Santosh Kumar Singh. His father was JP Singh, a senior IPS officer who would go on to become Joint Commissioner of Delhi Police. Santosh became obsessed with Priyadarshini. She rejected him. He began stalking her. She filed FIR after FIR. The police did nothing. Her father went to the university. The university did nothing. She was eventually given a personal security officer. The stalking continued anyway. On the morning of January 23, 1996, her security officer did not show up for duty. Santosh knocked on the door of her uncle’s house in Vasant Kunj where she was staying. A servant saw him enter. What followed took less than an hour. She was found under her bed. Strangled with an electric wire. Her face battered beyond recognition with a motorcycle helmet. She had 19 injuries on her body. DNA evidence linked Santosh directly to the crime. His fractured helmet visor was recovered. Witnesses placed him at the scene. In 1999, Additional Sessions Judge GP Thareja delivered his verdict. He said in open court I am convinced he is the man who committed the crime. Then he acquitted him. He said the CBI had fabricated the DNA evidence. He gave Santosh the benefit of the doubt. The Delhi High Court later called this verdict a perverse approach that murdered justice and shocked the judicial conscience. It took public outrage, media pressure and her aged father appearing on television for years before the High Court took up the appeal in 2006. Within 42 days, the High Court convicted Santosh and sentenced him to death. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction in 2010 but reduced the sentence to life imprisonment. He has since been granted multiple paroles. In 2019, he was given parole to appear for his LLM examination. The man who raped and murdered Priyadarshini Mattoo is studying law in prison. Her father fought for 10 years to get a conviction the judge already had in his hands in 1999. The verdict said police were reluctant to act on her complaints because Santosh’s father was a senior officer. It said junior staff do not react to complaints against the relatives of their fraternity. She filed FIR after FIR. Nobody moved. Not until she was dead. Follow for real stories India never makes headlines about.

"The Great Nicobar Project Is Possibly the Biggest Scam and Largest Theft Of India's Ecological Property": Rahul Gandhi

One-third of India's refining capacity. ~60% of its crude import throughput. All clustered within 250 km of the Pakistan border. Jamnagar is India's energy crown jewel — and its biggest strategic liability. A thread on why this needs to change 👇