Union minister Anurag Thakur on Wednesday accused the Opposition parties of politicising the alleged rape, murder and forcible cremation of a nine-year-old Dalit girl in South West Delhi, ANI reported.

“Politicisation has become [a] habit of some people,” Thakur told reporters. He asserted that the Delhi Police was taking appropriate action in the case, pointing out that four people have already been arrested.

The four accused – identified as Radhey Shyam, Kuldeep, Laxmi Narayan and Salim – were arrested on Monday. Shyam, 55, is the priest of a crematorium in Delhi’s Cantonment area where the alleged rape and murder took place. The other three men are all acquaintances of the girl’s mother.

Earlier on Wednesday, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi met the minor’s family. Kejriwal announced a compensation of Rs 10 lakh and said his government will order a magisterial inquiry into the matter.

Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati demanded stringent action against the guilty, while Bhim Army chief Chandra Shekhar Azad met a group of locals staging a protest in Delhi’s Old Nangal area, calling for capital punishment for the accused.

Hours after Gandhi and Kejriwal met the minor’s family, Thakur said that the Opposition politicises such crimes when they occur in a state where the Bharatiya Janata Party is in power.

On Wednesday evening, the Union minister was briefing the media on decisions taken in a Cabinet meeting earlier in the day.

When asked if the alleged rape and murder case and the Opposition’s reaction to it came up for discussion in the Cabinet meeting, Thakur said: “The Cabinet does not discuss who met whom.... The government discusses policies and programmes.”

He also accused the Congress of being inept in dealing with such crime in states where the party is in power.

“When such incidents often took place in Congress-ruled states, they did nothing about it,” he alleged. “It is unfortunate that they turned a blind eye when it came to our daughters in Rajasthan and Punjab.”

Thakur also claimed that the Cabinet’s decision on Wednesday to approve an extension to the centrally sponsored scheme for fast track special courts will help in providing justice swiftly in such cases.

The Cabinet’s decision will ensure an extension to the scheme till March 31, 2023, for 1,023 fast track special courts, including 389 courts dealing exclusively with Protection of Children from Sexual Offences, Thakur said.

The crime

The incident allegedly took place on Sunday evening at a crematorium in Delhi’s Cantonment area.

The girl had gone to get water from the crematorium’s cooler on Sunday evening when the incident took place, the police said. Around 6 pm, Radhey Shyam, the crematorium’s priest and one of the arrested men, called the minor’s mother and showed her daughter’s body. The priest claimed that she died by electrocution.

Shyam also coerced the girl’s mother into cremating the body immediately, suggesting to her that there was no need to inform anyone about the incident and that she would not be able to bear expenses of fighting a case.

The police has said that only the legs of the girl were recovered and it would be very difficult to ascertain whether she was raped or not.

The accused have been booked for gangrape, murder and other relevant section of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Act.