Hathras: Security tightened at Jantar Mantar as hundreds gather to protest

Besides ground force, senior police officers and paramilitary personnel have been deployed to manage the crowd; the protest site has been barricaded to restrict the movement of protesters

Security has been beefed up at the Jantar Mantar here where hundreds of civil society activists, students, Aam Aadmi Party and Left leaders gathered to protest against the Hathras gang-rape-and-murder case

Besides ground force, senior police officers and paramilitary personnel have been deployed manage the crowd. The protest site has been barricaded by the police to restrict the movement of protesters, an official said.

Senior lawyer Prashant Bhusan, actor Swara Bhasker, CPI(M) leaders Brinda Karat and Sitaram Yechury, and AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj are among those who gathered at the Jantar Mantar, demanding the justice for the Hathras victim.

The body of the 19-year-old Dalit woman, who died in Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital on Tuesday a fortnight after she was allegedly gang-raped, was cremated in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh in the early hours of Wednesday, with her family alleging that the police forced them to conduct the last rites in the dead of the night.

Local police officers, however, had said the cremation was carried out "as per the wishes of the family".