'Girls Leave Home For School But Do Not Return': UP Congress Chief Aradhana Mishra Targets BJP Over Women’s Safety In State

Lucknow: Newly appointed Uttar Pradesh Congress president Aradhana Mishra ‘Mona’ on Sunday launched a sharp attack on the BJP government over women’s safety, alleging that Uttar Pradesh has become increasingly unsafe for girls and women.

Referring to a series of incidents reported from different parts of the state over the past week, Mishra said the issue was not limited to individual crimes but reflected what she termed a failure of the system.

“Girls leave home for school but do not return. They become victims of rape and are later killed. If they survive, some become pregnant and in tragic cases, the minor and her child die during childbirth,” Mishra said in a statement.

She referred to incidents reported from Bulandshahr, Basti, Banda, Sonbhadra, Kaushambi, Lalitpur, Muzaffarnagar, Gorakhpur, Meerut, Prayagraj and Lucknow, and questioned the government’s response to crimes against women and children.

According to figures cited by Mishra, 66,381 cases of crimes against women were registered in Uttar Pradesh in a year, averaging around 182 cases a day. She said 3,516 rape cases were registered during the same period, or nearly 10 cases a day. The figures also included 3,206 murder cases, averaging nearly nine a day, and 31 acid attack cases.

Mishra also referred to the Supreme Court’s observations on the functioning of the Uttar Pradesh Police. On September 30, a bench of Justices Sanjay Kumar and Sanjeev Sachdeva expressed strong displeasure over the police investigation in a criminal case and questioned why the state police should not be disbanded.

The Congress leader said repeated observations by the higher judiciary had failed to bring about the required change in the state’s law and order situation.

She questioned the government over the safety of school-going girls, saying that even five-year-old and 10-year-old children were not safe and that cases of sexual assault, including alleged gang rape of minor girls, continued to be reported.

“When girls are not safe while returning home from school, when five-year-old and 10-year-old girls are not safe and cases of gang rape of minor students continue to surface, why is the government sitting with its hands folded?” she asked.

Mishra said women and girls wanted to live with dignity and security rather than fear, and made women’s safety a key part of her attack on the BJP government ahead of the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.

Mishra, a three-time MLA from Rampur Khas in Pratapgarh, was appointed Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee president on October 2, replacing Ajay Rai. The Congress also appointed Saharanpur MP Imran Masood as working president as part of its organisational restructuring ahead of the Assembly polls.