When a 23-year old physio-therapy student (Nirbhaya) was brutally raped and thrown out of a moving train in New Delhi on December 16, 2012, there was an outrage in the entire country.
Then Delhi chief minister Sheila Dixit was quick in condemning the incident and said she did not have the courage to meet the victim and described Delhi as a "rape capital.”
She went on to say that senior police officials should be held accountable for the failure to take adequate measures to stop such incidents and called for "immediate setting up of fast-track courts to try rape cases and to get justice in a time-bound manner".
When a similar incident happened at Shamshabad on the outskirts of Hyderabad in the early hours of Thursday in which a 26-year old veterinary doctor was gang-raped and burnt to death, there is a similar public outcry across the country.
The national media gave equal prominence to the Hyderabad rape and murder incident and political leaders of all hues in the country, besides film stars and other celebrities reacted strongly over the incident.
However, Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has not uttered a word in the last three days condemning the incident.
His son K T Rama Rao has been tweeting about it expressing anguish, but KCR did neither make any statement nor called on the family members of the victim.
A national television channel on Saturday night came down heavily on the TRS chief for not coming out openly against the inhuman incident and pulled up the party MP.
The residents of the victim’s colony at Shamshabad closed the entrance to their colony and asked the politicians not to enter their locality unless the chief minister reacted on the incident.
His daughter Kalvakuntla Kavitha, too, did not react on the gruesome incident. What is worse, both father and daughter attended a marriage function of a TRS MLA in Hyderabad and posed for photographs with smiling faces!
After a lot of criticism and hue and cry by the civil society, the chief minister made his first comments on the incident while addressing the RTC employees at Pragati Bhavan.
He said he was deeply disturbed over the incident and announced that there would be no more night duties for women RTC employees and they would get down from their duties by 8 pm.
In a separate statement, the Chief Minister’s Office said KCR had directed the authorities concerned to take necessary steps to complete the trial into the rape and murder incident speedily by constituting a fast track court.
He said the government would extend all possible help to the family of the victim.