President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday flagged the recent incidents of violence against women, saying such heinous crimes force people to think if the society has lived up to the vision of equal rights for all.

President Kovind  in his address at an NHRC function, also said the ideal way to mark Human Rights Day will be for whole world to introspect what more needs to be done to live up to the sacred text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“Gandhi had said that human rights and duties are two sides of the same coin… Our failings in human rights, as in violence against women, often stem from failing in our duties,” he said.

The two gruesome incidents of violence against women which shook the nation recently are the Hyderabad Veterinarian case and the Unnao case.

In a heinous incident, a 27-year-old veterinarian was brutally gang-raped and killed by four people in Hyderabad on November 27. Her charred body was found the next day under a culvert in Shadnagar.

The incident shook the entire country and a massive protest broke down in Hyderabad. On Saturday, a group of people staged a protest outside the police station in Shadnagar town where the accused were kept demanding death sentence for them. The accused were later killed in an encounter.

The Unnao incident comes close on the heels of the Hyderabad case. The rape survivor, who was assaulted and set ablaze by five men on December 5, died of cardiac arrest late on Friday at Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital.

The victim who had more than 90 per cent burn injuries lost the battle after 43 hours of being attacked.

The post-mortem report of the deceased stated that the victim had died of extensive burn injuries.

The woman, who had survived a brutal gangrape earlier in March, was on Thursday assaulted and set ablaze by five accused in the case in Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao district when she was on her way to the Rae Bareli court to testify against the men.

According to the victim’s statement to the police before her death, she was first hit on her head and then attacked with a knife on the neck. The men then poured kerosene and set her on fire.