On August 24th , 2013, a 20-year-old Dalit woman was raped and murdered while she was travelling to Jind from her village Baniyakheda. She had left home at 11 am and was on her way to write an exam. She was a student of the Junior Basic Teacher Training course. A woman from her village saw her get off the bus at the Jind bus stop, from where she was to take an auto-rickshaw to the examination centre. She was the daughter of a mason.
Several hours after she had left, her father received a phone call saying that a plastic bag had been found with some papers, including her identity card and her father’s contact number. When the victim did not return home even at 6:30 PM, the family went to file a complaint at the Pillukhera police station near their home. There, they found that the phone call had come from a person in Amarheri Gaon. The family went from Pillukhera to Amarheri to file the complaint but the Amheri police sent them back to Pillukhera police station, and the police refused to help them in finding the victim. The victim’s family went to search for her again at Amarheri Gaon but could not find her. During this time when their daughter had gone missing, when it was critical to find her immediately, the police refused to cooperate with the family, instead making them travel back and forth.
The next day, the family was told by the police that her body was found in the bushes near an irrigation canal in Amarheri. One relative had rushed to the spot, and seen that her body was lying face down, with her head at a lower level than her legs, which were sprawled closer to the road, her dupatta was missing, and her clothes were dishevelled.
The body was taken to the morgue by the police. The women of the family rushed to the morgue and found that the body was kept on a stretcher without supervision or refrigeration. The women carefully examined the body and saw that her salwar and lower body was soaked with blood, there were cigarette burns on her upper torso, her neck was tilted as if it was broken, her feet were injured, and her hands and toes seemed to be broken as well. The police refused to conduct the post-mortem or preserve the body appropriately in spite of repeated requests of the family. The family then decided to take the body outside the morgue and sit in protest of the delay and indifference shown by the police. The family and the community of the victim formed a committee to resist the police indifference and camped outside the Civil Hospital of Jind with the victim’s body, demanding justice. There, the police brutally beat up protestors, and even kicked the dead body of the girl, and slapped her father, saying “Go away, you won’t get anything here”.
The post-mortem was finally conducted two days after her body was found, and the police claimed that there was no evidence of rape and that it was a suicide. The police gave contradictory statements that her death was due to suicide, poisoning and mosquito bites. A second post-mortem was conducted only after the police violence on protestors attracted media attention and therefore pressure on the police.
The second post-mortem revealed that the first post mortem was conducted by an inexperienced person and in an extremely callous manner, resulting in the loss of crucial evidence. In the first post-mortem, the organs were wrongfully handled , and a segment of the large intestine was left hanging outside the body.
There were major contradictions between the first and second post-mortemsThe first post mortem report mentioned that the hymen was ruptured and the second one said that it was not. The police claimed again that it was a suicide, inspite of evidence of significant bruising and injuries suggesting rape.
A third post-mortem was conducted at AIIMS hospital, however by this stage the victim’s body was in an advanced stage of decomposition and the report could not prove rape. The police claimed that it was a suicide and said that traces of poison were found in the body, but this was denied by Dr Sunil Gupta of AIIMS, one of the doctors who conducted the post-mortem, suggesting falsifying of information by the police. None of the post-mortem reports were shown to the family in spite of RTI applications and court pleas.
In a pattern of blaming Dalit women for the violence they face, the police showed a consistent effort of asserting that it was a suicide before any conclusive evidence was found and hence not conducting a satisfactory investigation. The local administration and police attempted to hush up the case and hide their negligence by saying that the victim died by suicide. The police also showed contempt towards the victim’s family. This was made visible through the police brutality against the protestors, many of whom were also faced with blame in media reports which described them as a “mob” that went on a rampage and destroyed public property. Relatives of the vitim were arrested in connection with the peaceful protest, and one Dalit boy was arrested for ‘abetment of suicide’. All of the arrested youth reported police brutality in custody. The case was finally closed with the police claiming that it was a ‘suicide’ due to a ‘failed love affair’. We still do not know who murdered the young Dalit girl.
Supporting Links:
https://www.epw.in/journal/2015/44/review-womens-studies-review-issues/rape-atrocity-contemporary-haryana.html
https://wssnet.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/wss-haryana-report-compiled.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20200926061733/https://indiaresists.com/fact-finding-report-dalit-girl-rape-jind-haryana/
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/villagers-demand-justice-for-dalit-girls-death-in-haryana/article5075966.ece
http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/missing-girl-s-body-found-in-jind-family-alleges-rape-before-murder/1160080/
