On 4 January, 2001, a 15-year-old Dalit girl, along with her 13-year-old nephew, was collecting fodder for her family’s cattle near land which belonged to a man called Kantennavar (caste unreported) in Navalagi, Karnataka. Here, they were surrounded by four upper-caste men, all in their twenties. They beat up the nephew, who ran away to get the girl’s father. The men then dragged the victim to the sugarcane fields nearby, where they gang-raped her. The specific castes of the rapists has not been reported. When the victim’s nephew and father came back, the rapists ran away.
Soon after, the victim filed a complaint, evidence was collected, and they were found to be guilty by a Trial Court in Bagalkot in a judgement passed on October 28, 2003. The judgement sentenced them under Sections 376(2)(g) of the IPC which pertains to gangrape, and Section 3(2)(v) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 which gives an extended sentence for the same, when committed against a person belonging to a Scheduled Caste or Tribe. The accused were sentenced to imprisonment for ten years under the former, and given life imprisonment under the latter.
In 2005, the accused appealed against this judgement at the Karnataka High Court. The court upheld the conviction under the IPC for gangrape, dismissing the defendant’s claim that the victim’s statement was unreliable due to minor discrepancies and lack of corroboration. The judgement upheld her testimony as important evidence that need not be corroborated, and also highlighted the medical evidence and witness testimonies that supported her claims.
However, for the conviction under the Atrocity act, the judgement erased the caste-based nature of the sexual violence, instead referring to the rape as a “lustful act of misguided youth”. The judgement ruled that the rape was a result of their lust and not on the ground that the victim belonged to a Scheduled caste. In doing so, the judgement erased the victim’s experience as a Dalit girl raped by upper-caste men, and justified the violence as being a result of “lust”, rather than the upper caste male’s abuse of power. This was done in order to reduce the punishment of the rapists as the sentence would have been extended if the Atrocity Act was applied. In this judgement, punishment for only sexual violence was seen as justified, whereas punishment for caste-based violence was seen as unwarranted.
References:
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/6/10/indias-courts-condone-dalit-atrocities/
https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1155371/
https://www.akademimag.com/caste-gender-justice
https://ambedkarperiyarsociety.wordpress.com/tag/navalagi-gang-rape-case/
