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Modi's reticence risks carrying stain of rape into election year

Reuters, New Delhi
As India's rape epidemic gets worse by the year, critics have pointed fingers at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government for not doing enough to protect the country's women.
During the past week, his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been battered by a nationwide storm over two rapes.
One involved the abduction, gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl by Hindus in Jammu and Kashmir state, where two BJP ministers in the provincial government were forced to resign after initially offering support for the accused rapists.
In the other case, a BJP legislator in Uttar Pradesh state stands accused of rapinga teenager.
When Modi came to office in 2014, he coined the slogan "save our daughters, teach our daughters", but right now that message is ringing hollow.
By the time Modi addressed the outrage over the latest rapes last week by promising justice regardless of whoever the guilty were, critics had already hammered the prime minister
for his silence.
The economy and increasing intolerance towards religious minorities are expected to be the main issues for a general election due by next year and Modi remains a frontrunner with a splintered opposition struggling to narrow the distance.
But analysts foresaw the opposition
Congress and regional parties tapping a well of discontent over the BJP's weak response to the rapes, especially among better informed urban voters.
In Uttar Pradesh, the rape victim attempted to set fire to herself outside the state BJP chief minister's residence to get police to investigate her accusations against a BJP lawmaker, after being ignored for nine months.
According to a BJP official in Lucknow, the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath could be asked to resign to soothe public anger.
In Jammu and Kashmir, the communal dimension of the case could spoil BJP's ties with the mainly Muslim party that it shares power with in the state.
Laying all blame for the rape crisis at BJP is obviously unfair, but critics of the right-wing conservative party and its Hindutva or Hindu nationalist agenda accuse it of pandering to backward attitudes that suppress women.