*NEW DELHI: *A group of 637 academics across the World have written anopen letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, telling him that hisstatements on the “monstrous crimes” had been “wholly inadequate,platitudinous” and gave “non-specific assurances of justice” for thevictims.

“We send you this letter… so that we are not guilty of silence; and sothat callousness and cowardice might finally draw the line at the brokenbody of a little girl and the rape of a young woman”, said thestrongly-worded letter, released around the same time the governmentcleared changes to the penal code to introduce death penalty for childrapists.

The signatories include over 200 academics and scholars at universities inthe United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

The open letter is the second that has been addressed to PM Modi this week.

Former bureaucrats and police officers had written to him, holding PM Modiresponsible for a “terrifying state of affairs” and expressing concern atthe “decline in the secular, democratic, and liberal values”.

In their letter, the academics spoke about expressed their “deep anger andanguish” at the efforts to protect the alleged perpetrators of the rapes inJammu and Kashmir’s Kathua and Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao and what they called,were “profoundly distasteful” attempts at “rationalisation, deflection anddiversion” by the ruling BJP’s spokespersons.

Much of the public anger triggered by these two crimes had been directed atleaders of the BJP who had been trying to protect the accused in both cases.

In Uttar Pradesh where the police hadn’t filed a rape case against a BJPlawmaker accused of rape last year, the Allahabad High Court finally had tointervene and ordered legislator Kuldeep Singh Sengar’s arrest.

The horrific details of the eight-year-old girl’s torturous last days weredescribed by the International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde to be”revolting”. The child, belonging to a nomadic community, was kidnapped inJanuary and over the next week, drugged, starved, repeatedly gang raped andthen murdered.

Listing out a string of incidents that had taken place since 2015 includingdeaths linked to cow vigilantism, the academics saw the two rapes as “partof a pattern of repeated targeted attacks” on religious minorities, Dalits,tribals and women.

The letter noted that all these attacks had taken place in BJP-ruled states.

“This is not to associate violence exclusively with your party and withState governments presided over by your party. But there is an undeniableassociation with the ruling dispensation,” they said.

They also noted that there had been “little evidence” to suggest that thegovernment was assisting vulnerable sections of society or discouragingblatant breaches of the rule of law through preventive measures.