Delta would lead the Independence day parades at her school. Source: Mahendra Meghwal/BBC
“Delta Meghwal, a 17 year old Dalit student, was found dead inside a water tank in 2016. This was a day after she was allegedly sent to clean her teacher Vijendra Singh’s room at Jain Adarsh Teacher Training Institute in Nokha by her warden. Priya Shukla, the college warden, had made Delta sign an apology note saying that she had consented to sex with her teacher Vijendra Singh, who had allegedly raped her a day before she was found dead.
The Rajasthan police allegedly transported Delta Meghwal’s body in a garbage truck without collecting evidence & framed her death as a suicide even though the postmortem suggested murder.”
On March 29, 2016, 17-year-old Delta Meghwal, a Dalit girl, was found dead inside a water tank at the Jain Adarsh Teacher Training Institute for Girls in Nokha, Bikaner. On the previous day, she had told her parents 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 was then followed by her PE teacher, Vijendra Singh (caste unreported) allegedly raping her.
Instead of reporting this to her parents or firing the teacher for raping a student and filing a legal complaint against him, the college administration attempted to cover up the incident by blaming Delta. They made her sign an apology note along with Vijendra Singh, which implied that the act had taken place with mutual consent, though she was a minor. The principal Ishwar Chand Baid (caste unreported, though surname is often used by Jain Banias) did not take any action against the PE teacher nor did he inform the parents as was his responsibility.
After her body was found in the tank, 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, which is a record of observations by five people. 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.
The post-mortem suggested that she had not drowned to death, as her lungs were not congested. Although this implied foul play since the 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. After the forensic report came out in April, 2016, the police claimed that the report suggested that she had drowned, in contrast to the inferences drawn by local activist Suresh Jogesh who had accessed the post-mortem report.
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 and 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/
