On January 10, 1996, a woman belonging to the Pardhi tribe, was gangraped by three upper-caste men, Ramdas, Ashok, and Madhukar (caste unreported).
The Pardhis were one of 150 tribes who were termed as hereditary criminals under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. Under this act, members of notified tribes were systematically registered and their movements restricted, with many being quarantined without conviction. Although they were denotified, stigma and policing of the communities continued under the Habitual Offenders Act of 1952. In Maharashtra, the Pardhis are classified as a Scheduled Tribe.
The victim, who resided in the Ekurka village had come to Kewad to visit her family, and was staying at her father’s home. Her family members were away, working at the Jagadamba Sugar Factory in Ahmednagar district, and the victim was visiting to help her family harvest their crops.
At 10 pm on January 10th, 1996 Ramdas came to the victim’s house while she was alone, and asked her to come with him. When she refused, he dragged her out, and he whistled to call the other two men, Ashok and Madhukar. Around 500 metres away from her home, the three men raped her and threatened to kill her if she reported the incident. Although her uncle lived nearby, he did not come to help her when she raised an alarm, because they had threatened him with dire consequences as well. Ramdas and Ashok were the landowners of the plots adjacent to the victim’s family, and there had previously been land disputes between the victim’s family and them.
The next day, the victim visited her sister at Kelgaon village. The victim’s sister advised her to file a complaint. Although she went to a police station in Kaij and reported the rape, it was neither recorded nor was any action taken. After speaking to her parents in Ahmednagar, she again reported the incident to the Beed police station. The report that was finally lodged was marked as being lodged on January 18, eight days after the violence took place.
Despite the delay in registering the complaint, the perpetrators were convicted under Section 376 read with Section 34 of the IPC for gangrape, and Section 3(2)(v) of the Atrocities Act by a Sessions Judge in Beed in 1998. The rapists were sentenced to life imprisonment. The Maharashtra High Court also dismissed the appeals of the accused.
However, in 2006, the Supreme Court accepted the appeal of the accused and upturned, or reversed both of their convictions. The judgement dismissed the conviction under the Atrocities Act, stating “the mere fact that the victim happened to be a girl belonging to a scheduled caste does not attract the provisions of the Act”. Hence erasing the fact that the rape was also caste motivated; sexual violence is used to put a community in “its place” by an upper-caste man The court dismissed and erased the survivor’s experience as a Pardhi woman, instead framing it as a mere detail that she was using to her advantage. The judgement questioned and blamed her for the discrepancies in dates and the delay in the filing of the report. This was in spite of the fact that she testified to inaction by the police. She also said in her testimony that she was unable to verify the details of the report as she could not read it and had given her thumbprint without verifying it. The victim was thus refused justice as there was no higher court she could appeal to.
References:
https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1787689/
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/6/10/indias-courts-condone-dalit-atrocities/
https://www.akademimag.com/caste-gender-justice
https://lawyerscollective.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/2-feb-compressed.pdf
https://thewire.in/society/decades-after-denotification-pardhis-in-maharashtra-struggle-to-stave-off-criminal-tag
