On March 29, 2016, 17-year-old Delta Meghwal, a minor Dalit girl, was found dead inside a water tank at the Jain Adarsh Teacher Training Institute for Girls in Nokha, Bikaner. The institute informed the police that a student had committed suicide, and the police arrived to take the body for a post-mortem. The manner in which the police conducted the investigation showed that they had preemptively taken the account given by the staff of the institute at its word. According to the institution, Delta Meghwal had committed suicide due to being caught having consensual sex with her Physical Education Teacher, Vijendra Singh, the previous night. However, Delta’s parents allege that she was raped and murdered.
The incident occurred towards the end of the Holi vacations in the institution. Delta, who was the first person in her family to study beyond school, was about to finish her two year course at the institute, and her father had dropped her there on March 28, 2016. The other girls had not yet returned from vacation, and there were only 4 girls in the hostel. Delta’s exam results were expected the next day.
According to the hostel warden, Priya Shukla, Delta was found to be missing late at night on March 28. When she found out, she began a search for Delta with the rest of the staff, and asked her husband PP Shukla to join as well. She also asked the physical education teacher, Vijendra Singh to help in the search. He did not join the search, and according to Shukla, opened his door after a long time when she knocked on it. When he tried to shut the door again, she got suspicious and went inside to find Delta. She said that both of them accepted their ‘wrongdoing’, and she made them sign an apology note accepting their mistake and promising not to do this again in the future. The next morning, she found out at about 7 am, that Delta was missing from the hostel, and a search was begun. After which, she was found in the water tank.
The manner in which Priya Shukla handled the case, even based on her account, is highly questionable. Delta, a minor, and a student at the institution, was found in a teacher’s room. In this case, which would amount to sexual harassment and possibly statutory rape, the warden should have taken Delta’s account, informed her parents, and ensured Delta’s safety. However, Delta’s parents' allegations give a completely different account of the events.
On the night of 28th March, Delta called her parents and said that the warden at her hostel, Priya Shukla (whose caste was unreported, but surname suggests she is a Brahmin) had made her go to her physical education teacher’s room in order to clean it. This caste-based abuse committed by her hostel warden was then followed by her PE teacher, Vijendra Singh (caste unreported) raping her, of which Delta had informed her parents.
Vijendra Singh had reportedly joined as the Physical Education teacher four months ago, on the recommendation of Priya Shukla and her husband, who knew him from before. Though he was married, he was residing alone on the campus at the time, as his wife had not joined him.
The college authorities did not report this incident to Delta Meghwal’s parents. The administration did not fire the teacher for raping a student, nor filed any legal complaint against him. Instead the administration, especially the warden, attempted to cover up the incident by blaming Delta. They coerced her into signing the apology note along with the rapist Vijendra Singh which implied that the act had taken place with mutual consent. The principal Ishwar Chand Baid (caste unreported, though surname is often used by Jain Banias) did not take any action against the PE teacher and kept the incident undisclosed to Delta’s parents.
The next day, after Delta Meghwal’s body was found, the institution reported it to the police as a suicide, and the police evidently pre-emptively decided that she had indeed committed suicide, without taking into account the events of the previous night, or conducting a thorough investigation.
Police officials of the area removed the body from the water tank, without following the protocol for collecting evidence, such as recording a video of the condition of her body or even recording a panchnama. A panchnama is an official police record of what the witnesses see, which can be proved only when the said witnesses testify under oath to what they saw. This is an essential part of any investigation, meant to guard a case from unfair dealings on the part of the police. Further, her body was taken to the hospital for a post-mortem in a garbage truck, insulting her even after her death. The FIR was not filed for 24 hours after her body was found. Various details of the condition in which the body was found were ignored, such as injuries including a bleeding ear, noted by press reporter Pavan Kumar who had taken photographs of the body. Further, the tank was fully covered, though not locked.
The post-mortem revealed that she had not drowned to death, as her lungs were not congested. It implied foul play since Delta’s body had been placed in the tank after she was already dead. The police was in a hurry to pronounce it as a suicide even before the forensic report came out. When the forensic report came out in April, 2016, there was a discrepancy in the findings based on it. The police claimed that she had drowned, while local activist Suresh Jogesh who accessed the report, noted that the lack of congestion in her lungs showed that she had died before being placed in the water.
In spite of the facts of the case and the events preceding Delta’s death, the Vijendra Singh and Priya Shukla were only charged with abetment to suicide, for which they were given bail. According to the Delta Meghwal’s father, the public prosecutor assigned to their case also did not sufficiently represent them, and went against their allegations to say in court, that the case looks like a suicide. The three girls who were staying with her in the hostel, also turned hostile as witnesses, in favour of the institution.
The warden, PE teacher, and principal abused their power to first inflict casteist abuse and sexual violence on Delta, and then used intimidation and shaming to coerce her into signing an apology that they further used to blame her after her death. The note was used to portray her as unreliable and morally impure, ignoring the fact that she was a minor and a student. Rapist Vijendra Singh was responsible for abusing his power as her teacher. In her statement to a fact-finding team of the National Human Rights Organization, the warden framed the rape as “equal “wrongdoing”” on the part of both Delta and Vijendra Singh. The police also attempted to go through her text messages and phone records to suggest that she had been in a ‘relationship’ with the PE teacher for 2-3 months.
References:
https://medium.com/@maarizwickmaitreyi/how-brahminism-killed-anitha-and-delta-8366feb09488
https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/1/7352/Why-Has-The-Mainstream-Media-Blacked-Out-The-Death-Of-Delta-Meghwal
https://velivada.com/2017/03/28/remembering-delta-meghwal-an-unfinished-painting/
https://sabrangindia.in/article/delta-meghwals-death-role-warden-and-others-suspicious
https://sabrangindia.in/article/real-story-behind-rape-and-killing-dalit-girl-student-delta-meghwal
https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/know/beti-interrupted/article21987732.ece1
