#ReportingToRemember the Phugana Police for blaming & harassing a Dalit woman’s family when she tried to report molestation, which led her to die by suicide.

On April 13, 2018, Sudesh, a 39 year old Dalit woman committed suicide. Earlier that day, she was on the way to her village near Raipur, when two men Pradeep and Subhash (caste not reported) allegedly harassed her and pulled her into a sugarcane field to molest her. Her 8 year old son was with her. She was reportedly beaten up by the molesters when she tried to raise an alarm. The molesters ran away when people started gathering.

According to reports, her husband went to the Phugana police station in Muzaffarnagar district to file a complaint, but Police Sub-Inspector Subhash Chand detained Sudesh’s husband instead. He also demanded that Sudesh pay a sum of 5,000 Rupees to get him released. Sudesh scrambled to arrange for the sum and got it from the kiln owner where she worked, reaching the police station at night. The police still did not let her husband and her eight year old son go.

The police abused their power to harass and humiliate Sudesh’s family in order to punish her for daring to take action when she was sexually harassed. The police forced her to undergo the further distress of arranging for the money to pay for her husband’s release when neither of them had committed any crimes, but were instead reporting an injustice. Criminalising, bullying, and humiliating a victim of violence, especially a Dalit woman, and her family when they seek legal recourse deepens the injustice. The police officer worked to ‘punish’ Sudesh for not being silent.

Sudesh felt helpless,and hung herself reportedly on April 13, 2018 . She wrote in her suicide note that since the police were siding with the accused, she did not have any hope of getting justice, and therefore, she was ending her life.

Victim blame forced Sudesh to suicide. The burden of intimidation, humiliation, and harassment instead of protection on top of the burden of facing sexual violence led to this. #INeverAskForIt

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