#ReportingToRemember Jats of Mansa district, Punjab

Bant Singh Sings!
Credits to: Sanjay Kak & Anurag Singh 2006

On July 6 2002, in the Jhabbar village of the Mansa district in Punjab, two men sought the assistance of a Dalit woman, Gurmail Kaur, to lure Baljit Kaur, a young Dalit girl to her house, so that they could rape her. One of the men, Mandheer Singh, was a Jat, while sources vary on the caste of the other man. Most sources report him to be a Jat as well, though one source reports him to be a man named Tarsem, belonging to a Scheduled Caste.

Baljit Kaur, 17 years old at the time, went to Gurmail Kaur’s house to assist her in collecting water. There, the two men who were waiting, gangraped her. Jat men in the region had historically asserted power over Dalit women and girls through sexual violence. Enduring sexual violence at the hands of Jat men was seen to be like a ‘coming of age’ ritual, where Jat men proudly spoke about raping and hurting Dalit girls. Popular village songs also normalised this, and many followed a tradition where women from a Dalit bride’s house were made to put up a gidda or a dance show for upper-caste men with lewd songs that the men chose. Most of the times, Dalit victims of sexual violence were pressured into silence. They and their families were forced to settle for meagre payments and threatened with violence if they refused. Hence, no Jat rapist was brought to justice.

Jats, an agricultural caste, formed fifty-five percent of the population, while Dalits formed forty-five percent. While the Jats were a dominant, powerful caste which owned land, most of the Dalits were employed as agricultural labourers in Jat fields and hence economically dependent on them. Bant Singh and Baljit Kaur were Mazhabi Sikhs, a Scheduled Caste. However, Bant Singh like his father and elder brothers before him had refused to work as an agricultural labourer to remain economically independent from the Jats.

After she was raped, Baljit Kaur chose to not keep quiet or conceal her identity. Instead she challenged deep patriarchal values of shame and blame by speaking publicly about the rape. Baljit Kaur and her father, revolutionary singer and activist Bant Singh, decided to seek justice against the rapists.

It took a month for the FIR to be filed and Bant Singh and Baljit Kaur continued to face immense pressure from the rapists, and other members of the village, especially the Panchayat. They were offered upto 10 lakh rupees, 3 acres of land, a scooter, and jewellery, in exchange for their silence. They refused to settle the matter outside of court.

All the three accused were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2004. This was the first time that a conviction had been secured in a complaint by a Dalit against upper-caste violence. However, the conviction was followed by sustained harassment and violence as punishment for the conviction. Bant Singh’s elder brother Hansa Singh was forced to flee the village because of threats issued by the Jats. In 2005, Bant Singh was assaulted on two occasions by individuals associated with the rapists. Both the assaults were reported to the local police and charges were filed.

On January 5, 2006, Bant Singh was brutally beaten up by a group of armed Jat men. Severely injured, he lay on the road for 3-4 hours before anyone could come to his help. When he was taken to the civil hospital in Mansa, the doctor refused to touch him unless he was paid 1,000 rupees in advance. By the time Bant Singh was finally treated his wounds had become infected and due to gangrene, both his arms and a leg had to be amputated.

Soon after she was raped, Baljit Kaur was moved to a different village and married to a daily-wager widower with a child, in a family who was told about the violence she had faced and accepted her. This brought an abrupt end to her school education as well as an existing engagement with a boy her own age. Soon after the rape, she was blackmailed by men who threatened to ‘expose’ her. She found out who it was, and beat them up in the village square. Bant Singh continues to work for the liberation of Dalits in Punjab.

References:
https://www.hindustantimes.com/punjab/know-the-story-of-baljit-kaur-our-own-fatmagul/story-Egadgx1GNqWkhtBkh599YO.html
https://scroll.in/article/805090/the-dalit-who-lost-his-limbs-for-protesting-against-his-daughters-gang-rape
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/the-extreme-price-this-dalit-man-paid-to-get-justice-for-his-daughter/articleshow/78601298.cms
https://www.actionaidindia.org/story/no-arms-legs-but-spirit-high/
http://www.sikhtimes.com/news_012806a.html

#ReportingToRemember the Thakurs of Hathras, & the U.P. Chief Minister and Police

Manisha Valmiki’s family gathered at their home in Boolgarhi, Hathras. (Source: Manisha Mondal for The Print)

“If she was actually being raped why wouldn’t she have killed her rapists with the sickle she had with her for cutting grass?”

“Why would no one have heard her scream?”

“Why would a man who had two daughters, rape her?”

“The Valmikis have gone too far”. 

September 14, 2020: Manisha Valmiki, a 19 year old Dalit woman, was working on her family’s fields in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh. When she didn’t return home, her mother went to look for her, and found her lying on the ground, barely conscious, severely injured, and soaked in blood. 

She had allegedly been abducted, raped, and assaulted by four men from the Thakur-Rajput caste, Ramkumar, Ravi, Sandeep, and Luvkush. The Thakurs are a powerful landowning caste in Uttar Pradesh who command feudal power and political influence. The current Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Ajay Bisht alias Yogi Adityanath, belongs to the same caste. 

The Thakurs lived right across the street from the Valmiki family and for years had not been able to handle the fact that the Valmiki family, belonging to a formerly-untouchable caste associated with manual scavenging, had been working on their own fields rather than working for the Thakurs. Even today, the village continues to practise untouchability against the Valmikis– sprinkling water to purify their shops after they leave, forcing them to buy everything they touch. 

Nearly 20 years ago, one of the Thakurs who raped and assaulted Manisha, along with his father, had attacked Manisha’s grandfather as well. They had tried to stab and murder him, merely because he had asked the Thakurs to graze their buffaloes outside of the Valmiki family’s land. Their attempt to murder him was not successful, but they cut his fingers off instead.

The Thakur men had been harassing Manisha for over the past four months, and had even threatened to harm her family. Their harassment had reached a point where she had refused to ever go out of her house alone. 

Still, she was abducted from her own land, from near her own home, in broad daylight. The police never visited the crime scene, insisting on filing only an ‘attempt to murder’ case until she gained consciousness, eight days after the violence had taken place. India’s guidelines for medical examinations of sexual violence state that the chances of finding evidence are greatly reduced 72 hours after the incident. A maximum of 4 days, or 96 hours, should pass before medical samples are taken. The UP police collected the medical sample 11 days after the violence took place. 

The test results never came back while she was alive, but Manisha gave her testimony before she died in spite of the severe injuries that she sustained on her tongue while being strangled. She named the four Thakur men who had raped her- a dying declaration admissible in Indian courts as evidence of sexual violence. 

The police forcefully burnt her body at 2:30 AM on September 30, barring her own family from seeing the body or performing her last rites. Nearly 150 police officials formed a human chain blockading their home. The medical report, which the family had been demanding with urgency for days before that, came out only after Manisha had died from the severe injuries the Thakur men had inflicted on her, and only after her body had been burnt by the policemen who represent the Thakur Chief Minister’s government. 

The report said that she had not been raped because there was no presence of semen. Her testimony was erased and ignored, and her family began to be intimidated and threatened by the State. Savarna groups like the Rashtriya Savarna Parishad and BJP MLAs organized events and protests in support of the accused, calling it a ‘fake case’. As people began to protest to demand justice for Manisha, Section 144 was imposed in Hathras. Siddique Kappan, a journalist on his way to cover the case, was arrested. FIRs were filed against Bhim Army Chief Chandrashekhar Azad and 600 other protestors. The police stopped journalists from entering the village in order to block information and to gradually erase the case from public memory. Her family’s communication was tapped and their privacy violated. A Special Investigation Team constituted by the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister recommended a narco and polygraph test, an outdated, unscientific ‘truth test’ often associated with coerced confessions. The police seized the victim’s family’s phones and assaulted her father. Dr Azeem Malik, a doctor who publicly contradicted the police’s version and challenged the validity of the forensic report taken 11 days after the violence took place, was terminated from his position as the Chief Medical Officer at the Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital medical college.

The state machinery of Uttar Pradesh used all its power to stifle the demand for justice coming from all quarters, protect the accused, and discredit the victim and her family.

The kin of the accused have gone on record to dismiss the entirety of Manisha’s testimony. They say that the rape allegations are false and fabricated for political benefit.

“If she was actually being raped why wouldn’t she have killed her rapists with the sickle she had with her for cutting grass?”

“Why would no one have heard her scream?”

“Why would a man who had two daughters, rape her?” 

When all else fails, they say- these Valmikis have gone too far. “Yeh log sar pe chadh gaye hain”

Referring to the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act they say,

“Everyone knows Dalits have always used the Harijan (sic) Act to target upper castes”

“I have heard that the girl’s family killed her and framed the upper caste men. These people can go to any extent for money”

While refusing “permission” to her family from taking her body, the police rebukes them, saying- “We might have made mistakes, but you made mistakes too” 

The District Magistrate visits the Valmiki family and says- “Do you want to ruin your credibility? The media will leave in a few days, but we will remain in the village”

BJP leader Ranjeet Bahadur Srivastava says, “She must have had an affair with one of the boys and got caught.”

BJP MLA Surendra Singh off-handedly insulting Manisha’s family, says, “Rapes can only be stopped with sanskaar. It's the duty of all mothers and fathers to imbibe good values in their daughters and bring them up in cultured environments."

Exactly 14 years ago on the day Manisha succumbed to her injuries, Surekha and Priyanka Bhotmange were stripped, paraded naked, raped, and murdered by a mob of people belonging to the dominant Kunbi caste in Khairlanji, Maharashtra, while the men from their families were tortured and murdered. The Bhotmanges had also attempted to stand in the face of casteism in their village, having educated themselves and bought their own land, and Surekha had served as a witness, in another case of caste violence, against the men who would go on to rape and kill her. 

Nearly 10 Dalit women are raped every day. Though there is no data about the identity of the rapists, a pattern emerges from most instances of violence that are reported. The people who rape, harass, assault, and murder Dalit women are powerful, upper-caste men, who want to punish them for not being subservient, for educating themselves, for owning land, for walking alone, for going to work, for simply daring to claim personhood in a society where it is constantly denied to them. 

But the violence itself is never the end of the brutal indignities Dalit women and their families have to face. 

Sexual violence is followed by harassment and negligence from the police authorities, criminalisation of the victim’s family, humiliation and intimidation from police, politicians, rapists, and so on, and the constant dehumanization that the public memory serves to them. The violence inflicted on Dalit women is invisibilised, or their trauma made into sensationalised news that is forgotten as soon as it is published. The caste-based nature of the violence is undermined and the perpetrators’s caste identity goes unreported and protected. Often killed in order to be silenced, their testimonies are ignored, discredited, and made light of, the few women who survive sexual violence being driven to commit suicide from fear and shame. The perpetrators, supported by power structures located in caste solidarities of the police, media, and politicians, remain untouched and unaccountable.

We #PledgetoNeverForget Manisha Valmiki because she was raped and murdered by Thakur men and she was not believed.

We #PledgetoNeverForget the Valmiki family whose pleas for justice have been faced by intimidation and harassment and who are still standing strong in the face of the casteism of the entire country.

We are #ReportingToRemember the crimes of the Thakur-Rajput rapists, police, and state, and all those who are working to undermine and stifle Manisha’s testimony.

We pledge to work towards holding accountable a society driven by power and caste solidarities that invisibilises the injustices faced by Dalit women. We pledge to never forget. 

#INeverAskForIt

References:

https://thewire.in/caste/hathras-case-bjp-leader-rajveer-pahalwan-rally-support-accused-thakurs

https://www.thequint.com/news/india/bjp-leader-hindutva-groups-take-out-rallies-in-support-of-thakurs-accused-in-hathras

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/uttar-pradesh-police-threatened-beat-us-confiscated-mobile-phones-hathras-rape-victim-cousin-1727679-2020-10-02

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/hathras-gang-rape-autopsy-report-shows-victim-was-strangled-suffered-cervical-spine-injury-2303696

https://www.india.com/viral/prepare-to-be-more-shocked-savarna-parishad-allegedly-comes-out-in-support-of-hathras-rapists-says-innocents-are-being-framed-4157468/

https://www.deccanherald.com/national/north-and-central/media-will-be-gone-we-will-remain-dm-tells-hathras-rape-victims-family-896149.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-54370087

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/2/hathras-they-locked-us-inside-our-home-and-burnt-her-body 

https://www.hindustantimes.com/lucknow/hathras-gangrape-accused-were-harassing-her-for-months-says-mother-of-19-year-old/story-6MwdIIiEG2x7KHN0BUkQDN.html

https://www.thequint.com/news/india/hathras-ground-report-who-are-the-accused-caste-discrimination

https://www.newslaundry.com/2020/09/29/help-us-get-justice-please-dalit-girl-assaulted-in-ups-hathras-succumbs 

https://www.timesnownews.com/india/article/victim-must-have-called-the-boy-to-field-as-they-had-an-affair-bjp-leaders-shocking-remark-on-hathras-case/663406

https://theprint.in/india/paying-price-for-being-upper-castes-thakurs-brahmins-claim-hathras-accused-innocent/517959/
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/bjp-mla-surendra-singh-says-rape-cases-can-be-stopped-only-with-sanskar-not-governance-2304834 

https://thewire.in/caste/hathras-case-structural-violence-dalit-women-intersecting-factors
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/hathras-rape-murder-narco-test-dalit-narcoanalysis-6779071/
https://www.timesnownews.com/india/article/hathras-case-victims-family-likely-to-undergo-narco-test-up-cops-seize-phones-of-kin/661597 

https://www.firstpost.com/india/19-year-old-dalit-girl-in-icu-after-gangrape-assault-in-ups-hathras-one-accused-arrested-8853721.html
https://www.firstpost.com/india/19-year-old-dalit-girl-from-ups-hathras-dies-nearly-two-weeks-after-gangrape-and-assault-8861601.html
https://scroll.in/latest/974778/hathras-row-over-phone-tapping-as-india-today-reporters-conversation-with-womans-family-leaked
https://thewire.in/government/uttar-pradesh-hathras-protests-curfew-media
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/sedition-case-filed-against-kerala-journalist-3-others-arrested-by-up-police-on-way-to-hathras-2306407 

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/hathras-gang-rape-case-opposition-hatching-conspiracies-says-yogi-adityanath/story-uj2tdhjCaHvtvc1g0JiHoM.html 

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/hathras-case-fir-for-bid-to-trigger-caste-based-conflict-sedition-charge-included/article32773533.ece#:~:text=The%20Hathras%20Police%20have%20lodged,sedition%2C%20officials%20said%20on%20Monday.&text=between%20different%20groups

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/agra/fir-against-680-people-including-azad-for-violating-section-144-after-hathras-visit/articleshow/78500535.cms

https://theprint.in/india/hathras-administration-imposes-section-144-in-district-seals-borders-till-31-october/514412/

https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/hathras-case-no-meaning-of-fsl-report-after-3-days-of-rape-says-cmo-aligarh-medical-college
https://thewire.in/women/hathras-case-doctor-who-contradicted-up-police-version-on-rape-has-now-been-sacked-by-amu 

#ReportingToRemember Gujjars of Bhateri, Rajasthan CM Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, Sessions Judge Jagpal Singh, and BJP MLA Kanhaiya Lal Meena

“Gujjars Ram Sukh, Ram Karan, Gyarsa, Badri & Brahmin Shravan Sharma gangraped Bhanwari Devi and then led a casteist victim-blaming campaign forcing the entire village to socially boycott and exclude them.

Dhaule baal wali mahila se kaun balatkar karega? (Who would rape a grey-haired woman?)
- Bhairon Singh Shekhawat (then Chief Minister of Rajasthan) reportedly victim-blamed Bhanwari Devi after she was raped in Rajasthan, 1992.

Rajasthan Sessions Court Judge Jagpal Singh acquitted Bhanwari Devi’s rapists saying she’s lying because upper-caste men would not risk being polluted by raping a Dalit woman.

He blamed Bhanwari Devi’s husband asking how he could have “stood by” and “watched” his wife being raped, even though he had been brutally beaten by the rapists.

The court suggested that the lehenga produced as (tampered) evidence in Bhanwari Devi’s case was ‘too short’ to be hers, and that she was an adultress because of the unmatched semen sample found on it.

BJP MLA Kanhaiya Lal Meena attended a rally in support of the rapists, and denounced Bhanwari Devi as a ‘prostitute’ in 1996. The rally called for her to be hanged and burnt alive. She was attacked soon after.

Various unnamed villagers subjected Bhanwari Devi and her family to casteist harassment, and her son’s college peers called him names such as “kumhaari raand ka beta”, forcing him to leave his college.
”

On September 22, 1992, Bhanwari Devi, a Bahujan woman who used to work as a sathin in Bhateri, Rajasthan, was gangraped by five men from the Gurjar caste as her husband was beaten up. Bhanwari Devi belonged to the Kumhar caste which is traditionally associated with pottery, and had been working as a sathin since 1985. Sathins are grassroots workers employed as part of the Women Development Project, Rajasthan. Bhanwari Devi had been selected and trained as a sathin in 1985.

The Prajapat Kumhar caste, which Bhanwari Devi belonged to, is classified as an OBC in the state. She has also been reported to be a Dalit woman in many sources including the Court judgement. This can be attributed to differences between administrative and social categorizations or confusions in reportage. However, it is clear that she belonged to a far less powerful caste than her perpetrators, who were from the Gurjar caste. The Gurjar caste too is classified as OBC. However, the Kumhars are a minority compared to the Gurjars who were the majority dominant caste and held economic and political power, in the Bassi block especially. Badri, one of the perpetrators, was a prominent local politician, and the local MP Rajesh Pilot, was also a Gurjar and a cabinet minister at the time.

When she began work on a campaign to stop child marriage in 1992, she found herself alienated by the people of the village who got increasingly hostile towards her. During that time, the state government had decided to observe the fortnight preceding the Akha Teej festival as a anti-child marriage fortnight. The District Collector had asked the sathins to prepare a list of villages in the district where child marriage was rampant, and the Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO) and Deputy Superintendent of the Police (DySP) began to make rounds of these villages. Bhanwari Devi was seen by the villagers as the cause for this police intervention in her village.

On the day of Akha Teej, she tried to stop the marriage of a one-year-old girl in Ram Karan Gurjar’s family. Bhanwari Devi knew that she would face retaliation for this, and had told the officials that the Gurjars would come after her. But she was asked to stop the marriage regardless of this danger, and she was faced with a hostile response from the family. The MLA of the area also opposed her strongly. The policeman who was sent to stop the wedding, ate wedding sweets and left. Although the Gurjars bribed the police and were able to conduct the wedding the next morning, the entire incident was seen as Bhanwari Devi insulting the honour of the Gurjar caste and their village.

After this incident, Bhanwari Devi and her husband were socially boycotted by the village- their fields were destroyed and their fodder stolen. They were denied access to water and milk. Those who did not boycott her were threatened by the Gurjars and forced to withdraw support. This hostility finally culminated on September 22, 1992, when Bhanwari Devi and her husband were working on their fields. Her husband, Mohan Lal Prajapat was allegedly attacked by brothers Ram Sukh Gujjar, Ram Karan Gujjar, and Gyarsa Gujjar, their uncle Badri Gujjar, and a Brahmin man, Shravan Sharma. Hearing his screams, Bhanwari rushed to the spot. According to reports, Shravan Sharma and Ram Karan Gujjar held Mohan down, Ram Sukh Gujjar held Bhanwari Devi down, and Gyarsa Gujjar and Badri Gujjar raped her.

As a woman from an oppressed caste speaking publicly about sexual violence and decidedly seeking legal recourse, Bhanwari Devi was faced by victim blame from all parts of society for years to come.

The process of reporting the violence was marked by humiliation and dismissal. The police, refused to file an FIR, arguing with her for hours, humiliating her by asking whether “she even knew what rape was”. They did not conduct a medical examination until 52 hours after the incident, and even then, did not record all her injuries properly. In the aftermath of the trauma of rape, she was made to travel all the way to Rajasthan to have her medical examination taken. When she came back to Bhateri, the police made her deposit the lehenga she was wearing as evidence, forcing her to wear her husband’s blood stained turban as clothing while she walked back to her home. During this time, the local MLA also made a statement at the state legislature saying that Bhanwari Devi was lying.

The villagers, instead of holding the rapists accountable, blamed Bhanwari Devi for making a “private” matter of the village public and hence insulting the village’s honour.

The then Chief Minister of Rajasthan made a public statement saying “Dhaule baal wali mahila se kaun balatkar karega?” (Who would rape a grey-haired woman?) and refused to believe her allegations.

The accused were arrested more than a year after the incident, after the case was shifted to the jurisdiction of the CBI. During the course of the investigation, Bhanwari Devi was made to recount her statement multiple times, forcing her to relive the trauma of the violence again and again. Although Justice NM Tibrewal, the High Court judge who was first hearing the case had refused a plea for bail for the accused, saying he believed Bhanwari Devi’s testimony, the judges on the case were inexplicably changed five times. During the trial, she was humiliated and intimidated, being forced to recall the details of the violence in the presence of 17 men, including the perpetrators. The details were then spread in the village, where she faced further victim blame.

All five accused were acquitted by a Sessions Court in 1995, in a judgement that ignored her testimony and her husband’s witness, instead resorting to victim blame. The judgement blamed Bhanwari Devi for the violence inflicted on her by calling into question her purity and her morality.

The judgement blamed her husband, saying “it is not possible in Indian culture that a man who has taken a vow to protect his wife, in front of the Holy fire, just stands and watches his wife being raped, when only two men, almost twice his age,were holding him.”

It discredited her testimony, saying “there are three brothers and an uncle among the accused, and so, it is preposterous to believe that an uncle and his nephew would commit rape together”.

It said, “Among the accused is a Brahmin while the rest are Gurjars. Since gangs in rural areas are almost never multi caste, the charge that members of two different castes acted together is highly improbable”.

It blamed her saying, “Bhanwari Devi neither immediately informed anyone (for instance, her in-laws) about the rape nor did she immediately file an FIR for the same”.

It further discredited her and blamed her saying, “since Bhanwari Devi is a Dalit woman and all the accused men belong to upper-castes, it is ludicrous to believe that the latter would ignore the caste hierarchy and put themselves at a risk of being polluted by coming in contact with the former, let alone rape her”.

The judgement also dismissed her entire testimony saying, “the Indian rural society could not have sunk so low that a villager would lose all his senses of age and caste and pounce upon a woman like a wolf”.

The lehenga produced as evidence which was not the same one she had deposited, was pronounced to be too short to belong to Bhanwari Devi, and the semen collected from it was pronounced to not match the accused. The court blamed her character by suggesting that Bhanwari Devi was an adultress.

The acquittal and subsequent protests led to an even more hostile retaliation against her. People refused to buy clay vessels from her family, and they were denied access to all services and resources, not allowed to fetch water from the village. Their kids were bullied in school and they were excluded from all events and festivities. Her family asked her to make peace with her assaulters after the acquittal, but when she refused, they severed ties with her.

After the acquittal, people began to shame her and intimidate her in order to stop her from filing an appeal. In 1996, the BJP supported a rally organized by the five accused. The accused sat garlanded on a stage, as speakers accused Bhanwari Devi of lying, and insulted everyone on her side. The organizers called for Bhanwari Devi to be hanged and burnt alive. A BJP MLA Kanhaya Lal Meena denounced her as a prostitute. Incited by this rally, a number of villagers attacked her once again and beat her. After the release of the film Bawandar based on her story in 1999, her family faced further humiliation and blame. Her son, who was a college student, was forced to leave the college where he was studying when he was called “kumhari raand ka beta” (potter whore’s son).

Later, both her sons and their wives severed ties with her as well, blaming her for the shame they had to face. Her in-laws and her brother cut ties with her after she refused to accept the monetary compensation offered by the rapists to shut down the legal case.

Bhanwari Devi awaits justice to this day. As recently as 2018, she was still facing the victim blame for seeking justice against her perpetrators, and was refused water from the village hand pump. Even today, she has to travel to a nearby village to grind her grains. The case is still in appeal, and two of the perpetrators have died.

References:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-39265653
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4406813?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
https://www.news18.com/news/india/the-story-of-bhanwari-devi-indias-metoo-woman-1682995.html
https://cjp.org.in/as-metoo-mounts-bhanwari-devis-struggle-must-not-be-forgotten/
https://aud.ac.in/uploads/1/admission/admissions2019/M%20Phil%20Reading%202-compressed.pdf
http://ssr-net.com/issues/Vol_4_No_1_June_2018/3.pdf
https://feminisminindia.com/2017/03/03/bhanwari-devi-essay/

#ReportingToRemember Andhra Pradesh Police

One of the survivors on her way to work. (Source: Ayesha Minhaz for Scroll.in)

On August 20, 2007, 11 women of the Kondh tribe in a tribal village called Vakapalli, in the Visakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh, were allegedly raped by 13 Greyhound personnel.

The Greyhounds are a special unit of the police force that operates in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and specialises in anti-insurgency operations against Maoists and Naxalites. The names and castes of the rapists have not been reported. The victims belonged to the Kondh tribe, and are classified as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) in Andhra Pradesh, a sub-classification under Scheduled Tribes.

Vakapalli falls in one of several areas along the Andhra Pradesh-Odisha where Naxalites have a presence. The Greyhounds personnel stormed the village at around 6 AM in the morning, for what they called a “combing operation”, or looking for Naxalites. The men had left to work in the farms much earlier in the morning, at around 4-4:30 AM. Only women and children were present in the village at the time. The Greyhounds reportedly surrounded the village, began to ransack the homes in the village, and raping the women. Some women were raped at gunpoint, utensils thrown around in the homes, the power supply cut. Some women were raped in the fields. Out of the 11 women, 7 women were gangraped.

Operations to “flush” out Maoists or Naxalites by state personnel or state-sponsored militant groups has long been an excuse to inflict violence against tribal communities, especially women. When the 11 victims sought justice against their rapists, they were faced with dismissal and victim-blame from the State as well as their community.

On the day of the violence, when they went to file an FIR, the local police refused to file one, saying that the women had fabricated the crime. The Superintendent of Police Akum Sabharwal, said that the allegations were baseless and the women wanted to tarnish the image of the police. The Director General of Police, MA Basit said that the allegations were baseless and part of a ploy by Maoists to discourage combing operations. The FIR was only registered a week later after protests by villagers.

On September 6, an inquiry was initiated by the State Government under the charge of the Secretary of Tribal Welfare. The report said that no medical evidence of rape was found, even though the FIR was filed a week after the rape. In the inquiry, the police accepted that 21 Greyhounds personnel were present in the hamlet on that day but denied the allegations of rape, instead claiming that the 30 women in the hamlet had attacked them when they attempted to take one person into custody during a routine combing operation. But the report recommended that an investigation be conducted without any further loss of time, since no investigation had begun even 18 days after the police complaint was filed.

A tribal-rights organisation, Andhra Pradesh Girijan Samakhya, filed a writ petition in the High Court in September 2007, following which the investigation was handed over to the superintendent of police of the Crime Investigation Department. On November 14, 2007, based on the CID’s report, the High Court dismissed the writ petition. In 2008, the victims challenged the CID report before a local magistrate which began proceedings in the case. Soon, the High Court stayed the proceedings based on an appeal by the accused. Four years later, it ruled that only 13 out of the 21 accused personnel could be tried in the case. The 13 personnel filed another petition in the Supreme Court to quash the criminal case against them.

In 2017, ten years after the rape of the 11 women, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal of the accused and ruled that the case should be concluded in the next six months. However, the police, protecting the accused, have continued to cause delays. As of February 2020, the case was still not concluded, with the police refusing to cooperate and claiming that key documents required for the trial were ‘untraceable’.

The accused State personnel are taking advantage of the stigma and trauma of the victims, and delaying the case in order to overwhelm the victims, their communities, and their resources. In the many years following the violence, the victims have faced victim blame in various forms.

According to a local custom, women who face harm are separated from their families and not allowed into their homes until the perpetrators are brought to justice. One of the women was separated from her new-born baby as well. They were provided shelter during this separation by the village leader. However, during this time, one of the women died from a snake bite. Another woman died after severe mental trauma. When the community realised that seeking justice against the police would be a long battle, a cleaning ritual was performed on the women. The women were asked to bathe themselves in the cold water of a nearby river before they could enter their homes. Many of the women restricted themselves to working and staying at home for years due to the fear and shame of being identified in public. The victims were also ordered by the panchayat to pay 10,000 rupees and a bull each as penalty for being raped. The penalties were waived off after intervention by an NGO. Some of the husbands continued to resent the victims for a long time. One husband of a victim said that even though he knew it was not her fault, sometimes he got so angry at her that he felt like drinking her blood. Another husband wished that his wife had died after being gang-raped. Due to ostracization from the community, two of the women were abandoned by their husbands.

Meanwhile, the police intimidated and harassed various members of the community, blocking their access to facilities such as healthcare, banks, higher education, revenue offices, and so on, all of which were located in the mandal headquarters. People travelling to and from there were illegally detained and abused in custody. One man, named Korra Chinnabai, disappeared shortly after the police told his friend that there was a Naxal case against him. The police denied having him in custody. The police filed numerous Naxal cases against the villagers to demoralise them and increase the pressure on the victims.

Throughout their battle for justice, the women continued to face the accusation that they were lying because they were Maoists or because they were protecting Maoists. Even if this was true, it doesn’t negate the fact the women were raped, but calling Adivasi women Maoists or Maoist sympathisers is the State’s way of justifying and blaming them for any violence inflicted upon them.

References:

https://scroll.in/article/848097/adivasi-women-in-andhra-who-accused-elite-anti-naxal-force-of-rape-10-years-ago-struggle-for-justice
http://www.vizaginfo.com/vnews/2007/august/Eleven-Tribal-women-allegedly-gang-raped.asp
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/a-decade-later-ordeal-continues-for-greyhound-rape-victims-of-visakhapatnam/story-yH8gRyNKIIvPp0ZIbPsBEP.html
https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/andhra-pradesh/2017/aug/19/10-years-later-still-no-justice-for-vakapalli-tribal-women-in-vishakapatnam-gang-raped-by-greyhound-1645174.html
https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/andhra-pradesh/2017/sep/01/sc-fast-tracks-trial-of-greyhounds-cops-for-2007-gunpoint-rape-of-11-tribal-women-1651159.html
https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/11274-ap-rape-victims-punished-while-accused-stay-free
https://www.newsclick.in/11-years-vakapalli-adivasi-women-struggle-justice-against-rape-accused-anti-naxal-force
https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/2007-vakapalli-gangrape-ap-cops-delay-trial-claiming-documents-untraceable-117832

#ReportingToRemember Chandrapur Sessions Court and Supreme Court of India

Activist Seema Sakhare (R) with Mathura (L) at an anti-rape rally after the Supreme Court verdict (Source: Stree Atyachar Virodhi Parishad, Nagpur. Reproduced on CNN)

On March 26, 1972, Mathura, an Adivasi girl aged between 14 to 16 years, was allegedly raped in custody by two police officials, Ganpat and Tukaram (castes unreported).

She was an orphan who made her livelihood through domestic work and manual labour, often with an older woman named Nushi. She fell in love with Nushi’s nephew, Ashok Kodape. They developed an intimate relationship and had planned to get married in the future. Their relationship was not accepted by Mathura’s brother, Gama, who filed a complaint against Nushi, her husband Laxman, and Ashok, saying that they had kidnapped her and were forcing her into prostitution.

At around 9 PM on the night of March 26, the three accused along with Mathura were summoned to the Desaiganj police station, where the Head Constable, Baburao recorded their statements, before leaving for dinner and asking them to leave. However, after Baburao left, Ganpat and Tukaram, two constables, asked Mathura to come inside the police station and asked the others to leave.

She was taken inside the police station and the lights were turned off. Ganpat allegedly forced her to accompany him to a latrine, where he raped her. He then took her behind the station, where he raped her again. Tukaram molested her and attempted to rape her too.

After she lodged a complaint, Mathura was subjected to the two-finger test during the medical examination. The two-finger test is an extremely invasive procedure rooted in the logic of victim blame. The doctor noted that there were no injuries on her body, her “hymen revealed old ruptures”, and that “the vagina admitted two fingers easily”. The Sessions judge acquitted the accused, saying that Mathura was a “shocking liar” whose testimony was “riddled with falsehood and improbabilities”. The court said that she was “habituated to sexual intercourse” and was lying about rape in order to appear virtuous before Nushi and Ashok after consenting to sex with the police constables. Although the acquittal was reversed by the High Court, on an appeal to the Supreme Court, the accused were acquitted again in 1978. The Supreme Court referred to the rape as a “peaceful affair”.

References:

https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2013/11/world/india-rape/
https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1092711/
https://feminisminindia.com/2015/01/27/from-mathura-rape-case-to-delhi-2012/

#ReportingToRemember Rahul, Praveen, and Kuldeep

Source: Hindustan Times

On September 18, 2017, an 18-year-old Dalit woman died in a hospital in Haryana, two days after she had consumed poison in order to kill herself. Around a month before this, the victim who lived in the Palwan village, was on her way to get water from a neighbouring area in the village. On her way, she was allegedly taken to a field by three men, Rahul, Praveen, and Kuldeep (castes unreported), who then gangraped her.

On the same day, the victim narrated the incident to her parents. However, fearing social stigma, the family of the victim decided not to file a police complaint. Instead, they complained to the families of the accused, asking them to counsel their boys to stay away from their daughter.

What followed was a month of harassment and public shaming by the accused, which escalated after the complaint was made to their families. The accused would reportedly stalk the victim, often demanding that she accompany them. When she refused, they would paste posters outside the victim’s house, with false details of the rape and objectionable remarks about the victim, in order to shame her and warn her of further humiliation if she took action against them. They would also taunt her when she went out. Finally, they threw a letter inside her house with more vulgar remarks which drove her to commit suicide. Unable to bear the harassment, she consumed poison on September 16, after which she was admitted to a hospital. She died two days later.

References:

https://www.deccanherald.com/content/633877/family-kept-mum-dalit-rape.html
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/dalit-gang-rape-victim-ends-life-after-accused-shame-her-in-jind/story-k9RaH1W4T54RmDRyCbLo7J.html
https://indianexpress.com/article/chandigarh/18-yr-old-dalit-girl-commits-suicide-after-gangrape-3-arrested-4851752/

#ReportingToRemember Haryana Police and Media

Asha Kowtal, Ambedkarite activist from All India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch, speaks at protests held to seek justice for the victim (Source: International Dalit Solidarity Network)

On August 24, 2013, a 20-year-old Dalit woman was allegedly raped and murdered while she was travelling to Jind from her village Baniyakheda, in order to write an exam. A daughter of a mason, she was studying in a Junior Basic Teacher Training course and had left home at 11 am to appear for a compartment exam. 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.

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. There, they found that the phone call had come from a person in Amarheri Gaon. The family went there to file a complaint but the 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. The next day, the family was told 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 women of the family had rushed to the morgue where her body was kept 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. When their queries about the post-mortem did not receive any response, they decided to take the body outside and sit in protest of the delay and indifference shown by the police. 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. A second post-mortem was conducted after the police violence on protestors attracted media attention. This post-mortem showed that the first one was conducted by someone without the necessary experience and in an extremely callous manner, resulting in the loss of crucial evidence. In the first post-mortem, the organs were not cleanly or completely removed, and a segment of the large intestine was left hanging outside the body. There were major contradictions between the first and second post-mortems, where the first said 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 that suggest 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 one of the main 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 police also showed contempt towards the victim’s family 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’.

References:

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/
https://idsn.org/strong-dalit-protests-over-haryana-death/

#ReportingToRemember ASI Ram Prakash, Haryana Police, and the Rodh community in Kalsi

Source: Aradhna Wal, Tehelka

On 6 August 2012, a 14 or 15-years-old Dalit girl was allegedly abducted on her way to school and raped by two men, Ajay and Krishnen, from the Rodh community in the Kalsi village of the Karnal district in Haryana. The Rodhs or Rods are an agricultural dominant caste in Haryana similar to the Jats. The victim belonged to the Dhanuk caste, a Scheduled caste in Haryana. They were helped by a woman from the victim’s neighbourhood, who took the clothes she had been wearing when she was raped and washed them, and gloated about the loss of her honour to her mother.

The victim was supported by her parents, and especially her mother, who sought justice for her daughter in spite of opposition from the community and threats from the accused. On September 3, the victim’s mother went missing. However, when her father tried to file a complaint, Assistant Sub-Inspector Ram Prakash, who belonged to the same caste as the accused, allegedly refused to file a complaint. A complaint was written down on September 4 but many of the crucial details were excluded, and the FIR was finally registered on September 5, two hours before her body was found dumped in a canal. The victim’s mother had allegedly been raped, strangled with her chunni, and disfigured with acid by the same men.

When the victim and her father went to file the complaint for the rape and the murder, Ram Prakash reportedly tore up their complaint and threw it away, and insulted them for their caste. The complaint was finally filed when the Superintendent of Police intervened. Even then, since the clothes she had been wearing during the rape had been washed, the police took the clothes she had worn to the police station that day and filed it as evidence, no doubt to discredit the case during trial. To Manisha Devi, an activist from All India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch (AIDMAM) and National Confederation of Dalit Organisations (NACDOR) who had accompanied them to the police station, one of the police offers said that such problems would only end when there are no Dalit women left. Manisha Devi quoted him as saying, “Yeh sab khatam ho jaani chahiyen” (These women should cease to exist).

The family faced ostracization from their own community, due to the implication of their Dalit neighbour in the case, as well as economic boycott from the Rodhs, due to which the victim’s father was left without a livelihood in the village. They received threats from the accused, as well as pressure from the panchayat to withdraw their complaints. The victim was also kicked out from her school. She later became an activist associated with AIDMAM and Dalit Women Fight, and she wrote that during her work she was faced by further victim blame, with people calling her casteist slurs and questioning her moral character.

References:

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Year-on-rape-survivors-father-approaches-SC-for-justice/articleshow/22109790.cms
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
http://tehelka.com/silence-is-not-an-option/
https://www.tribuneindia.com/2012/20121019/haryana.htm
https://dalitwomenfight.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/manisha.pdf
https://idsn.org/wp-content/uploads/user_folder/pdf/New_files/Key_Issues/Dalit_Women/NCDHRSubmission2012_VAW_Dalitwomen_India.pdf

#ReportingToRemember Jats of Dabra village, and Hisar Police, Panchayat, District Collector, and CMO

The victim’s mother with a picture of her husband who was driven to suicide when he was shown a video of the rape. Source: Daily Mail

On September 9, 2012, a 15-year-old Dalit girl from the Dabra village in the Hisar district of Haryana was on her way to her relative’s house in a nearby village, when she was abducted by a group of 8 to 12 men who then raped her and filmed the act. The victim gave a statement where she said that 12 people were involved though 4 of them were never named in the FIR or on media reports, and the victim believes that the police excluded their names in order to protect them. According to some reports, she was raped by 7 men while 5 others stood guard.

At least 8 of them were reported as belonging to the Jat caste. The victim belonged to the Chamar caste. Jats are the dominant caste in the area, with their population being 800 households, whereas Chamars make up only 150 households and are largely economically dependent on the Jats.

The men took her to a field on the road, fed her intoxicants, and then raped her. They filmed the act, threatening to release it if she reported the violence to anyone. Although she was silenced by this threat, they began to sell the video, reportedly for 200 rupees. When her father found out about it, he committed suicide by consuming pesticide. According to some reports, she revealed what had happened to her mother who had noticed that she had become withdrawn and asked her about it repeatedly, and her father was told that the videos would be released when he was planning to file a police complaint. According to other reports, he found out about it when a co-worker at the house where he worked as a gardener, showed him the video of the rape that had already been leaked.

It was only after her father’s suicide that the case gained attention and local activists began to protest, that the police started to pursue the case. By this time, the accused were absconding. The police delayed the investigation at various stages and harassed the victim and her family. They picked up men at random, asking her to identify them, and when she refused to identify them as her rapists, they would taunt her saying things such as “if this is not the right guy, you go and find them yourself”. They intentionally omitted the caste of the perpetrators from the police reports, instead attempting to implicate Dalit youth, including the victim’s brother. Meanwhile, the family continued to face threats from the panchayat, local political parties such as the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and the kin of the accused. The police finally made 11 arrests, though only 4 were convicted. Those who were convicted were also released on bail.

After she enrolled in a local girls college in Hisar, a sister of one of the accused who was studying at the same college revealed her identity, following which she began to face harassment from her peers. In November 2013, she wrote to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, saying upper-caste students at her college were taunting her and using filthy language against her. Her complaints to the principal went unheard and no action was taken against the harassers. While she was promised free treatment at local hospitals, she was always made to pay, ignored, and humiliated. While around the same time Jyoti Singh was taken to Singapore for treatment, the victim wrote that she was being refused treatment even at the local nursing home.

After she was interviewed by reporters from an Australian TV channel, she was further harassed by the District Collector, her college principal, and the Chief Medical Officer, who declared her mentally ill to discredit her. The victim’s brother too, was forced to drop out of the Industrial Training Institute (ITI) where he was studying due to taunts and humiliation after his sister’s rape and father’s death.

References:

https://frontline.thehindu.com/social-issues/article30189440.ece
https://www.epw.in/journal/2015/44/review-womens-studies-review-issues/rape-atrocity-contemporary-haryana.html
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/north/story/breakthrough-in-hisar-dalit-girl-gang-rape-case-accused-identified-116780-2012-09-24
http://sanhati.com/articles/5667/
https://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-gang-raped-in-12-hisar-teenager-displays-exemplary-fighting-spirit-1879065
https://www.news18.com/news/india/hisar-gangrape-case-two-more-accused-arrested-512713.html
https://wssnet.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/wss-haryana-report-compiled.pdf
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/dabra-gangrape-4-awarded-life-term-4-acquitted/
https://www.outlookindia.com/newswire/story/seven-more-arrested-in-hisar-gang-rape-case/776380
https://www.oneindia.com/india/dalit-gangrape-victim-writes-schedules-castes-commission-1337865.html
http://tehelka.com/silence-is-not-an-option/
https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/gang-rape-victim-faces-taunts-at-college-complains-to-ncsc-113110800407_1.html

#ReportingToRemember Jat rapists and Jat khap panchayat of Daya village, Haryana

Source: Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression, EPW

On November 3, 2012, a 16-year-old Dalit girl was gangraped by four Jat boys in the Daya village in Hisar district, Haryana. The victim, whose mother had passed away 12 years before this incident, used to live with her father, who was a labourer at a sand mine. She returned home from school in the afternoon to have her lunch as she did everyday. Her father would be at work during that time. As she was eating, the four Jat boys, who were all known to her, entered her house, tied her up, and then raped her one after another, threatening to kill her if she reported it to anyone. Jats are a traditionally agricultural caste, which although classified as OBC in some states, is a powerful landowning caste in Haryana and enjoys political influence.

After the violence, the victim dropped out of school out of distress, but did not tell anyone what happened out of shame and fear. When her father found out the truth, he told some members of the family and the matter soon became public knowledge in the village. On November 8, the Jat Khap panchayat (unelected all-male caste council) attempted to force the victim and her father to accept an apology and some compensation in return for not reporting the violence to the police.

The victim and her family refused to do so, and the victim’s father went to the police station on November 11 to report the matter. There, he was threatened and intimidated, and forced to sign a statement saying that the victim had only been beaten up. The rapists’ family members immediately came to the victim’s house when they found out about the case, and abused and intimidated the family, threatening social boycott and expulsion from the village if they did not drop the case. The victim’s father was coerced into signing a statement saying that a compromise had been reached.

Soon after, with the help of the uncle of the victim, student groups and Dalit activists, a complaint was filed with the Superintendent of the Police, a medical examination was conducted, and the accused were arrested.

However, the arrests were followed by public khap panchayat meetings, where the Jats threatened the victim’s family with expulsion from the village if they did not withdraw the complaint. The accused were released on bail a month after the arrest, and the case was shifted to the Deptuy Superintendent of the Police, with details of rape being ommitted, the victim’s testimony erased, and the charges only including trespass, simple hurt, and threat. The police said that the medical examination, which was conducted six days after the violence took place, did not match the victim’s testimony of rape. The charges under the Atrocity act were also dropped.

When the victim’s lawyer filed a complaint against this investigation in court, the police filed a counter-case under the Atrocity act against him since the DSP whom he had accused of falsifying the case also belonged to a Scheduled Caste.

The family was faced with further harassment, intimidation, and caste discrimination following this. The Jats of the village regularly threatened them and imposed an economic boycott on the victim’s father who in the absence of any livelihood in the village had to travel 8 kilometers to get work. Her uncle and cousins were implicated in false cases alleging that they kidnapped a Jat boy. The victim was forced to leave the village and go to her aunt’s house in Hisar after the rapists were released on bail, and she had to leave school due to taunts and harassment.

References:

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/Dalit-girls-gangrape-All-four-accused-arrested/articleshow/17177446.cms
https://wssnet.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/wss-haryana-report-compiled.pdf
https://www.epw.in/journal/2015/44/review-womens-studies-review-issues/rape-atrocity-contemporary-haryana.html

#ReportingToRemember Supreme Court of India

Source: Indian Kanoon

On January 10, 1996, a woman belonging to the Pardhi tribe, was raped 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 these 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 she had come to help them in harvesting their crops.

At around 10 pm on January 10, Ramdas came to the victim’s house while she was alone, asking 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 them.

The next day, she visited her sister at Kelgaon village, who advised her to lodge a report. Although she went to a police station in Kaij and reported the matter, 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, or eight days after the violence took place.

In spite of the initial issues, the perpetrators were convicted under Section 376 read with Section 34 of the IPC, and Section 3(2)(v) of the Atrocities Act by a Sessions Judge in Beed in 1998, and 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 both of their convictions. The judgement flatly dismissed the conviction under the Atrocities Act, saying that “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, where a community is put in place by a man from an upper-caste. 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. Further, the judgement questioned and blamed her for the discrepancies in dates and the delay in the filing of the report, even though she testified to inaction by the police as well as being unable to verify the details of the report on which she was made to give her thumbprint.

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

#ReportingToRemember 2005 Judgement by Karnataka High Court

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/

#ReportingToRemember Rakesh Panghal, Shakti Singh, and other Jats of Bhagana, Haryana

Dalit women of Bhagana demand justice at a protest site in Delhi.

Source: Neyaz Farooquee/Al Jazeera

““There was some chakkar between one of the girls & an accused boy. It’s all politics.These girls are known to have multiple love affairs.” #ReportingToRemember Sarpanch in response to the rape of 4 Dalit girls by 5 Jat men in Haryana, 2014.
The 4 girls: age 13 yrs, two 17-yrs & 18 yrs all belonging to the Dhanuk caste, were allegedly sedated, abducted & raped by 5 Jat men. The adolescents were relieving themselves in a field at night.
Jats in Bhagana had previously usurped land meant to be distributed to SC & OBC populations. Dalits including Dhanuks, Chamars & Valmikis, were made to pay for small land plots, while Jats got it for free.
ats of the village took over a playground - ‘Ambedkar Chowk’, a meeting place for Dalits .When the Dalits protested the Panchayat’s decision
(headed by a Jat Sarpanch), the Jats enforced a social boycott. Dalits were left without access to livelihood. Dalit women were harassed & in heightened fear. 2 of the 4 girls had dropped out of school before the rape, for fear of harassment. 138 Dalit families fled the village.
150 Dhanuk families had stayed back including the victims families. The 4 girls woke up from the sedation & found themselves with bruises & torn clothes in the Bhatinda railway station.
The village Sarpanch mocked the families of the survivors. He termed it an ‘elopement’ & refused to file a complaint.
Later, the Sarpanch also threatened to kill the girls if they told anyone of the rape.
The sarpanch attempted to forcefully marry the adolescent survivors of rape, to the accused, framing it as elopement. The forced marriage was prevented by Dalit youth. The police filed the complaint after the community protested.
Sarpanch & a patriarchal accomplice were named by the survivors but left out of the FIR. They were further subjected to the 2 finger test. The Jats of Bhagana now boycotted the Dhanuks as well.
The Dhanuks were excluded from employment & didn’t receive support from authorities. 80 families including the victims fled the village due to ostracisation & threat of violence. They camped in Delhi in protest.
According to NewsLaundry reports, the then CM of Haryana refused to support Dalits of Bhagana in response to caste-based sexual violence. He reportedly said “I’m a Jat first” & “Chief Minister later”.
In 2015, the five accused Jat men were acquitted by a fast track court in Hisar for lack of evidence.”

On the night of March 24, 2014 four girls, a 13-year-old, two 17-year-olds, and one 18-year-old, from Bhagana in Haryana went to the wheat fields near their homes to relieve themselves, as they did every night. There, they were allegedly sedated and abducted by 5 men belonging to the Jat caste, who carried them off in a car and then raped them. The five accused were Lalit, Sumit, Dharnwir, and Sandip Panghal from Bhagana, and Parmal Panghal from Kugand. The victims also accused the sarpanch Rakesh Panghal and his uncle Virendra of planning the violence. The victims, who woke up in the Bhatinda railway station in Punjab, with torn clothes and bruises on their body, were found there on March 25.

The victims belonged to the Dhanuk caste, a Scheduled caste in Haryana. The perpetrators, Jats, are an agricultural caste which was dominant in Bhagana due to ownership of land and political power. Dalits made up 30% of the population of the village, and included the Chamar caste, the Dhanuk caste, and the Valmiki caste. Bhagana had seen years of caste hostility by the Jats against the Dalits, starting from 2011, when the Jats appropriated a large part of the community land which was to be distributed by Panchayats to SC and OBC populations. The Jat khap panchayat ensured that the land was given for free to the Jat families while Dalits were made to pay 1000 rupees for each 60-yard plot of land. The Jats also took over a playground which had for years been a meeting place and community space for the Dalits, known as ‘Ambedkar Chowk’.

When the Dalits protested against this decision of the Panchayat which was under the leadership of Ramesh Panghal, the Jats unleashed a social boycott that left the Dalits without livelihood, access to resources, healthcare, and so on. Dalit women were routinely harassed by Jat men who built a culture of shame and fear in the village, and prior to the rape, two of the victims had even dropped out of school due to harassment by youth from the dominant caste. In 2011, 138 Dalit families were forced to flee from the village due to the constant threat of violence from the Jats, with about 150 Dhanuk families staying back.

After the four girls went missing, their families went to Panghal to ask his help in filing an FIR. He laughed and dismissed their worries, terming it as an elopement, even though three of the girls were minors, and refused to file a complaint. When the families said that they would go ahead and file a missing persons complaint without his cooperation, he finally revealed that he knew about their whereabouts. Rakesh Panghal along with his uncle Virendra drove the families to Bhatinda. There, they made the family go back via train citing lack of space and drove the girls back themselves. The two men intimidated and threatened the girls on the journey back, saying that they would kill them if they told anyone what happened. They also tried to drive them to their own house, intending to marry them off to the accused, and frame the violence as a case of elopement. The victims were rescued by some men from their community on the way.

The police ignored their complaints and refused to file an FIR until 200 people protested outside the station. In the FIR, the names of Rakesh and Virendra were excluded even though the victims had named them in their testimony. On March 25, after going through the trauma of being sedated, abducted, raped, and threatened, the girls were made to wait for their medical test till 1:30 AM at night. During their medical examination they were subjected to the extremely dehumanising two finger test, an unscientific method where medical professionals penetrate a rape victim’s vagina without their consent, aiming to check the “elasticity” of the vagina and give an opinion about whether the victim is “habituated to sex”. This method is not only invasive and traumatising, but is also based in victim blame, as women’s sexual history is used to discredit their testimonies of rape.

After this, as the victims’ families sought justice, the Jats extended their social boycott, which was earlier focused on the Chamar community, to the Dhanuks as well. Members of the Dhanuk caste were even excluded from employment under the MGNREGA scheme. In spite of sustained protests, they did not receive any support from authorities, and in fact the then-Chief Minister of Haryana Bhupendra Singh Hooda flatly refused to help them saying that he was a Jat first and a Chief Minister later.

Members of the Jat community went on record on multiple platforms to engage in victim blaming. Rakesh Panghal said, “It was a consensual act. There was some chakkar (illicit affair) between one of the girls and an accused boy. It’s all politics”. On another occasion he said, “These girls are known to have multiple love affairs. How can they be trusted?”. Shakti Singh, who became the sarpanch after Panghal, said, “The girls went with the boys on their own will and later blamed it on them”.

Following the rape, around 80 families along with the victims were forced to flee due to the threats and ostracization by the Jats, and they set up a protest camp in Delhi. In 2015, the five accused were acquitted by a fast-track court in Hisar for lack of evidence.

References:

https://www.newslaundry.com/2016/08/30/the-story-of-bhaganas-dalits-land-lost-gangrape-social-boycott
https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/bhagana-dalits-to-protest-outside-hooda-residence/article5997888.ece
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2014/5/13/indias-dalit-rape-victims-cry-for-justice
https://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/reliving-a-nightmare/article6019311.ece
https://www.hindustantimes.com/chandigarh/with-no-solution-in-sight-hostility-continues-between-upper-and-lower-castes-at-bhagana-village/story-4hCRhOU8RgBakadpIKh8PO.html
https://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/29/rape-allegations-in-a-haryana-village-underscore-a-social-fracas/
http://feministsindia.com/bhagana-rape-context-dalit-rights-common-land/
http://www.humanrights.asia/news/urgent-appeals/AHRC-UAC-063-2014/
https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/nation/story/20130211-gangrape-two-finger-test-is-not-just-unscientific-but-degrading-761954-1999-11-30
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/hc-disposes-of-plea-related-to-bhagana-gang-rape-case/articleshow/73994925.cms

#ReportingToRemember Families of Mausam Kumar, Amit, Raju, Akash, and Sandeep Kumar, and Haryana Police

Source: Hindustan Times

“Mausam, Amit, Raju (Jats) Akash & Sandeep Kumar in 2013 allegedly gangraped a Dalit woman & filmed it, threatened her with the video & raped her again, pressurising her family to drop the case and leave town.
Family members of the accused said that the victim was lying & “playing the Dalit card” to gain sympathy
Two of them were arrested and released on bail while three others were never arrested.
In 2016 the same Dalit woman was raped again.”

On July 13, 2016, a 21-year-old Dalit woman was found unconscious in the Sukhpura Chowk area of Rohtak, Haryana. A masters student at Rohtak’s MD university, she was allegedly abducted from near her college, drugged, gangraped, and left to die in the bushes by two out of five men who had raped her before in Bhiwani in 2013. Out of the five men, Mausam Kumar, Amit, and Raju alias Jagmohan are Jats, while two others, Akash and Sandeep Kumar are Dalits.

After the five men allegedly raped her in Bhiwani in 2013, two of them were arrested and released on bail while the other three were never arrested. While the family filed a case for their re-arrest and continued to seek justice, they were faced with social ostracization and shaming, as well as threats to their safety from the accused, who were allegedly pressuring them to agree to an out-of-court settlement of 50 lakh rupees. This victim-blame forced the family to move to Rohtak.

According to the victim’s mother, she was first gangraped by the five accused on October 18 in 2013, when they videographed the act and threatened to release them online. They further threatened her saying that they would release the videos if she did not meet them to settle the matter on October 22, when they gangraped her again. However, a sessions court in Bhiwandi in 2015 ruled that the accused were not guilty, due to differing testimonies given by the victim between 24 October 2013, and 11 November 2013. According to some reports, the victim was drugged before being raped in 2013 as well, and this, along with the fact that the accused had video recordings of the violence, point to the reason why the victim may have been reluctant to give her entire testimony or not testified to all facts accurately. According to the victim’s cousin, in the period following the violence, they were also made to go from one police station to the other without cooperation from the police. The victim’s family challenged the court order in the Chandigarh High Court.

The kin of the accused claimed that she was lying and blamed her of playing ‘the Dalit card’. Phrases such as this, which frame marginalization as an advantage to be used by a victim for their benefit, are a form of victim blame, aimed at discrediting a victim due to their caste.

The case was complicated in November, 2016, when a District Court in Rohtak released all five accused after a Special Investigation Team found no investigation against them, and CCTV footage and call records showed that they were not in town on the date and time of the crime. The accused and their counsel went on record to say that they would file defamation cases against the complainant.

The police arrested two other men, Sandeep Hooda and Pramod Kumar after they were seen on CCTV footage along with the victim. Their castes were not reported, though Hooda is a surname used by Jats. Without confirming their version of the events with the victim, the police shared their testimony with the media which said that the victim had called Pramod to her college gate, gone to a hotel with him, where they had had a few drinks and had consensual sex, before he left her in an inebriated state. The victim’s family found out about this statement through the newspapers. This callousness on the part of the police shows a tendency of highlighting facts which follow a narrative of victim blame while showing a disregard for the victim’s privacy.

References:

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/rohtak-gangrape-dalit-woman-2920820/
https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2016/jul/18/Rapists-on-bail-rape-Haryana-Dalit-woman-again-882273.html
https://thewire.in/gender/rohtak-dalit-gang-rape
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/3-years-on-Rohtak-girl-raped-again-by-same-five-accused/articleshow/53256791.cms
https://scroll.in/latest/811968/haryana-student-gangraped-a-second-time-in-three-years-by-same-men
https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/rohtak-dalit-gangrape-case-sit-says-no-proof-court-frees-all-5-accused-3088664/
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/choked-threatened-beaten-rohtak-gangrape-victim-recalls-horror/story-JTiZm2GaauSTOTDeNOWHVL.html
https://www.freepressjournal.in/cmcm/rohtak-gang-rape-case-victims-kin-blames-police-of-trying-to-save-accused
https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/Fifth-arrest-made-in-Rohtak-gang-rape/article14508393.ece
https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/220716/rohtak-double-gangrape-survivor-says-she-lives-in-fear.html?fromNewsdog=1
http://www.catchnews.com/india-news/rohtak-horror-where-dalit-women-and-children-are-rape-targets-1469121086.html
https://www.thequint.com/news/india/rohtak-gang-rape-amid-conflicting-versions-in-search-of-truth-sit
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/rohtak-bhiwani-dalit-woman-gangrape-twice-victim-mother-2922346/

#ReportingToRemember Vanniyars Muthuvel, Ajith Kumar & Seth and Cuddalore Police

Courtesy: Priyanka Thirumurthy, The News Minute

“Vanniyars Muthuvel, Ajith & Seth in 2020 allegedly abused and murdered a Dalit woman. The police ignored evidence & called it a suicide. They were the 3 sons of a Vanniyar man with whom the victim had been in a relationship. Disapproving of this relationship, the sons had previously publicly stripped & abused her. The police discredited the victim’s family by claiming that she had called the Vanniyar man for liquor before dying, thereby making moral assumptions on her character ( women who drink liquor as loose). ”

On July 4, 2020 a 40-year-old Dalit woman from the Sriraman village in Ariyalur, Tamil Nadu, had left her house at around noon to take a bath. When she didn’t return for a long time, her father went in search of her. He found his daughter’s body near a local temple which fell under the limits of the Cuddalore district. Her family believes, due to a history of casteist violence she has faced, and due to the conditions in which she was found, that she was raped and murdered by a group of Vanniyar caste men, but the police claim that it was a suicide.

Although historically associated with agricultural labour and classified by the government as a backward class, Vanniyars have increasing influence in Tamil Nadu as they have gradually moved to own more and more land. Vanniyar political organizations, such as the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) have been known for anti-Dalit mobilizations and violence.

The victim had reportedly been in a relationship for the past 2 to 5 years (sources vary) with a man named Palani, a 45-year-old widower from the Vanniyar caste. His sons Muthuvel, Ajith Kumar, and Seth, were against the relationship and had inflicted casteist violence on her five months prior to her death. They had stripped her and tied her to an electricity pole, after which they beat her and hurled caste slurs at her. They forced her family to apologize and promise to them that she will discontinue the relationship.

According to witnesses’ accounts and reports, she was found tied to the tree while she was kneeling, her clothes were in a disarray and had blood on them. However, the police claimed that it was a suicide, and did not send the body for a post-mortem until 300 villagers protested outside the police station two days after her death. According to the Panchayat President of the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) in the area, Palani had called her on that day as well. The VCK was formerly known as the Dalit Panthers Iyyakam in Tamil Nadu, a movement inspired by the Dalit Panthers in Maharashtra.

The police blamed the violence on the victim and erased her and her family’s experience of casteist violence by not only claiming that she had committed suicide without a satisfactory investigation, but further claiming that she had called Palani from another woman’s phone at noon on that day asking for liquor. A claim like this, although made without substantial evidence and irrelevant to ascertaining whether or not she committed suicide, shifts the onus on the family to defend her from this blame.

References:

https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/dalit-woman-found-dead-tn-village-family-alleges-sexual-harassment-and-murder-128063
https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/tamil-nadu/2020/jul/07/cuddalore-dalit-woman-raped-murdered-over-affair-2166370.html

#ReportingToRemember Bansal and Mittal family of Model Town and the Delhi police

The thumbnail shows the house of the Bansals in Model Town, where the victim used to work and was allegedly raped and murdered.

Credit: Sagar, Shahid Tantray, and Prabhjit Singh

Source: The Caravan

“In 2020, a 17 year old domestic worker from the Nishad community (OBC) was found dead in her employer Drupadi Bansal’s house in Model Town, Delhi: Hours after she had called her foster-mother alleging mistreatment.
Before any sufficient investigation could take place, the police claimed she had died by suicide. Her body was kept away from her family & forcefully burnt.The full post mortem wasn’t given to them either.
Instead, when her community demanded answers from the Bansals, they were allegedly arrested, assaulted & tortured in custody where the police threatened them with false cases if they dared to file an FIR.
The victim’s family believes that she was raped & murdered at her employers home (Bansal). Instead of investigating this, the police allegedly inflicted brutal abuse on them while protecting the Bansals.
Domestic workers, especially those who are Bahujan women, are treated as dispensable. Their rights, dignity, & safety in the workplace are denied everyday. Systemic erasure of violence is victim blame. ”

On 4 October, 2020, a 17-year-old domestic worker belonging to the Nishad community was found dead in her employer Drupadi Bansal’s house in Model Town, Delhi. Her foster-family, who has been taking care of her ever since her mother’s death many years ago, believe that she was raped and murdered, but the employer’s family and the police claim it was a suicide. The employer’s family consists of Bansals and Mittals, both belonging to powerful Bania or mercantile castes. The Nishad community is a marginalized caste, classified as OBC in Delhi.

A few hours before her body was discovered, the victim had called her foster mother to say that Bansal was forcing her to sleep in the driver’s room even though she didn’t want to do so, and she asked her foster mother to come and take her because she didn’t like it there. Her foster mother, Kusum, had arranged for her to work at the Bansal house around a week before this day. Kusum and Bansal had agreed that her daughter would sleep in the dining room, which had a CCTV camera.

Kusum could not go to pick her up immediately as she had to attend to some work. When she came back home, she found that Drupadi Bansal’s daughter Renu Mittal had called her. When she called back, Mittal told Kusum that she was going to pick her up and take her to the house because her daughter had locked herself in a room and was not coming out. On the way, Mittal kept Kusum from calling her daughter saying that they were going to reach soon anyway. As they reached the house, however, Kusum saw dozens of policemen there, and Mittal asked her to meet her daughter and went upstairs to her mother’s house. Bansal’s son was also at the house. The policemen were sipping on cold drinks.

Kusum went inside to find her daughter’s body hanging from the ceiling in the driver’s room. Before she was dragged away by the policemen, she noticed that the cloth with which she was hanging did not belong to her, and there were boils and bruises on her hands, back, and armpits.

What followed was harassment, abuse, intimidation, and assault, with the police making every attempt to keep the body of the victim from the family. The family was made to give multiple statements even though allegedly no statement was ever taken from the Bansals.

Frustrated with the inaction, being kept from the body and not being told any of the facts of the case, Kusum’s family and neighbours broke a few planter pots in front of the Bansal house to demand answers from the family.

In retaliation, the police detained 12 people from amongst the family and their neighbours. In custody, the men and women were allegedly assaulted and abused. The police pulled the women by their hair, beating them, and hurling insults. Many police officers, in an inebriated state, forced the men to jump, hitting them every time they stopped jumping. The police released them only after warning them to not demand an FIR and threatened to file false cases against them under the Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897 if they dared to try to file one. The police threatened to get all of them evicted, and even beat up the victim’s 12-year-old cousin, threatening to declare the victim’s body as unclaimed and burn it.

The post-mortem was only conducted 4 days after the incident and on 8 October, the police allegedly forcefully burnt the body of the victim. The family was also not allowed to access the full post mortem report which came out after the body was burnt. Even after the post-mortem report came out, the police refused to file an FIR.

On October 16, Kusum’s family and neighbours, along with students from the nearby Delhi University staged a protest outside the Model Town station. The protestors, including a reporter from the Caravan, were forcefully detained and allegedly abused in custody. Many of the detained protestors and people who came out in support of Kusum were from her neighbourhood Gurmandi, a predominantly Dalit locality, where many work as domestic workers.

The police has not yet registered an FIR, and has declared it a case of suicide without any evidence or investigation.

In order to help the upper castes escape accountability for violence against a Bahujan woman, the Delhi police has used the same tactics of violence, intimidation, humiliation, and harassment against the victim’s family that the state has historically used against Dalit-Bahujan families when they seek justice, most recently against the Valmiki family in Hathras. Violence from upper-castes is erased and the blame is instead placed on the victim, with official records framing rape and murder as suicide and discrediting the victim’s testimony or their communication with their family as unreliable. The family is humiliated and dismissed by police officials, and if they dare to protest in any way, they are further violently punished. All of these forms of abuse of power serve to erase caste-based sexual violence, enable upper-caste perpetrators to escape accountability, and justify sexual violence through the caste position of the victim.

Sources:
https://caravanmagazine.in/labour/model-town-nishad-mother-teenager-suspicious-death-police-repression
https://english.madhyamam.com/india/hathras-model-rape-murder-and-cremation-in-delhis-gurmandi-586470
https://caravanmagazine.in/law-and-order/the-caravan-staffer-assaulted-by-delhi-police-acp-inside-model-town-station
https://thewire.in/women/model-town-delhi-gonda-rape-domestic-help

#ReportingToRemember Marathas of Ruikhed in Buldhana, Maharashtra

The 50-year-old Dalit woman and her family said they were accused of attempting to steal a pair of bullocks from a farm that belonged to a dominant-caste Maratha family.

Image source: Sukanya Shantha for the Caravan

“Marathas of Ruikhed, Maharashtra in 2017 allegedly attacked a 50-year-old Dalit woman to punish her for being politically assertive & blamed her for the violence by claiming that she was a thief & liquor brewer.”

On June 2, 2017, a 50-year-old Dalit Charmakar woman was beaten, stripped, and dragged on the ground by a mob of 30 Maratha men in the Ruikhed village in the Buldhana district of Maharashtra. The mob left her when she fell unconscious from the violence. The mob also tried to attack her husband and sons, though they managed to escape with minor injuries.

According to the victim’s account, there had been some conflict between her husband and her son for some time preceding the day of the violence and on that evening, their fight escalated, and her husband left the house saying that he would hang himself to death. Distressed and terrified, they ran out to look for him, and mistakenly entered their Maratha neighbour’s farm. The Marathas were celebrating a wedding and a lot of the men were inebriated. Someone saw the victim and shouted “Thief! Thief!” and soon the mob started attacking her. The mob pushed the police patil to the ground when he tried to intervene as well. They dragged her for nearly 500 metres, till the main access road of the village. After the violence, they threatened the other villagers saying that anyone who tried to help her would face dire consequences.

In the Ruikhed village, there are only 25 Chamarkar families, and the Maratha hold a lot of political influence, with the sarpanch, deputy sarpanch, the Tanta Mukti Samiti, and the police patil, all belonging to the extended Maratha Ugale family. However, the victim in this case had been politically assertive and owned six acres of cultivable land. This assertion did not sit right with the dominant caste families and according to the victim, it is for this reason that they punished her.

Members of the Maratha community went on record to blame the victim and justify the violence, lying about how the victim was a thief, and pointing to previous complaints of manufacturing illicit liquor and cattle theft that were pending against her and her family. Due to the victim not having a clean record, many activists also withdrew involvement from the case.

References:

https://caravanmagazine.in/vantage/maratha-majority-village-maharashtra-mob-violence-dalit-woman
https://www.deccanherald.com/content/615842/maha-dalit-woman-50-beaten.html 
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/maharashtra-dalit-woman-beaten-and-stripped-on-theft-allegation-4691991/

#ReportingToRemember Jat Khap Panchayat in Kaithal, Haryana

Source: Ramesh Menon, The Week

“6 Jat men raped a Dalit woman in 2015. #ReportingToRemember the Jat Khap Panchayat in Haryana for forcing her to alter her testimony against the rapists. Her family was harassed by the Khap & forced out of the village.”

On March 10, 2015, a 30-year-old Dalit woman from the Kaithal district in Haryana, was gang-raped by six men of the Jat caste. She filed an FIR on the same day and on March 28, the police filed charges including rape, kidnapping, and assault under the Prevention of Atrocities Act.

As the trial was delayed due to forensic results that were yet to come, the victim and her family began to face harassment and victim blame from the Khap Panchayat. Although in this case the law was being followed by the police and justice could have been served, the victim blaming tactics of intimidation were used by the dominant caste men to force the victim and her family to turn into a hostile witness in court, altering her testimony, and helping the accused to get acquitted. Soon after, the victim and her family left the village.

References:

https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/11/08/everyone-blames-me/barriers-justice-and-support-services-sexual-assault-survivors
https://www.theweek.in/webworld/features/society/india-losing-battle-against-sexual-violence.html

#ReportingToRemember Mishrilal Kodapa, Rajesh Tiwari, & SR Yadav from Cheechli Police

Source: The New Indian Express

“#ReportingToRemember Cheechli Police- Mishrilal Kodapa, Rajesh Tiwari & SR Yadav for allegedly demanding a bribe of 50,000 INR when a Dalit woman went to report rape. They abused her & arrested her family, driving her to suicide in 2020. ”

On September 28, 2020, a 32-year-old Dalit woman was working in an agricultural field, cutting grass for cattle, in Narsinghpur, Madhya Pradesh. Three men, Arvind and Parsu Choudhury, and Anil Rai gangraped her. According to the police, Arvind and Parsu belong to the same caste as the victim. Anil Rai’s caste has not been reported, though we can infer that ‘Rai’ is a title often used by Rajput castes, historically conferred upon hereditary rulers and zamindars by the Mughals as well as the British.

After the violence, the victim and her family were faced by police inaction and harassment. First, they went to the Gotitoria police station to file an FIR on the day she was raped. The police took a verbal complaint but did not file an FIR. The police also did not conduct a medical examination, which they said would be conducted the next day. The next day too, the police refused to file an FIR. This negligence was allegedly practised by assistant sub-inspector Mishrilal Kodapa, whose caste has not been reported. Fed up by his inaction, the victim’s family went to the Cheechli police station. Instead of lodging an FIR, the police locked the victim’s husband and his elder brother in the lockup and abused the victim. According to her husband, they were held based on a complaint lodged by the accused and had to pay Rs 50,000 as a bribe in order to get released.

Distressed by the harassment and blame the victim and her family faced, she died by suicide on October 2, 2020.

Mishrilal Kodapa was suspended, and Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) Rajesh Tiwari and Gadarwara Sub Divisional Officer of Police (SDOP) S R Yadav were transferred as punishment for the harassment meted out to the victim. Tiwaris are Brahmins, and Yadavs are listed as OBC in Madhya Pradesh. According to the police, the victim further faced victim blame and humiliation from Arvind’s father, Motilal, and one Leela Bai, who taunted her when she went to fetch water.

References:

https://www.hindustantimes.com/bhopal/dalit-woman-kills-herself-after-police-refuses-to-lodge-fir-on-gang-rape/story-iCl9VDHA8VHaZRLB1N2waI.html
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/dalit-woman-dies-by-suicide-in-madhya-pradesh-kin-allege-police-inaction-on-rape-complaint/story-F3mafn5FzmEL1qq7DR5GYO.html
https://www.firstpost.com/india/rape-victim-dies-by-suicide-in-mps-narsinghpur-family-alleges-police-refused-to-register-complaint-8875311.html
https://www.firstpost.com/india/narsinghpur-gangrape-madhya-pradesh-cop-arrested-after-dalit-woman-ends-life-over-his-refusal-to-register-case-8877141.html
https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2020/oct/02/gang-raped-dalit-woman-kills-self-after-cops-refuse-to-registercomplaint-for-three-days-in-madhya-p-2205011.html

#ReportingToRemember Gondia Police

Video Source: Video Volunteers

Thumbnai: Sanjay and Devakabai Khobragade’s house. The couple was sleeping just below the portraits of Buddha and Dr. Ambedkar in the open verandah.

Source: Nilesh Kumar for RoundTableIndia

“Gondia police in 2014 arrested Devakabai a 48 yr old Dalit woman in the murder of her husband Sanjay Khobragade. When produced in court she said she had been tortured in custody & forced to confess killing him.
Her husband, Ambedkarite activist Sanjay Khobragade had been set ablaze while he was sleeping. In his dying testimony he named 6 murderers whom he had heard that night. They belonged to the dominant Powar caste.
There had been an ongoing conflict between the Powars & Khobragade to build a Buddha Vihar for the Dalits of the village. They had previously allegedly burnt down his house after an argument about the same.
The police dismissed his testimony & instead claimed that Devakabai was having an affair with their neighbour (also Dalit) and that they killed her husband after being ‘caught’ in a ‘compromising position’ ”

On May 16, 2014, 50-year-old Dalit activist Sanjay Khobragade was doused with kerosene and set ablaze as he was sleeping in his courtyard in the Kawalewada village in Gondia, Maharashtra, allegedly by six Powar men and women. What followed was a victim blaming campaign against his wife, Devakabai.

During the five consequent days while Khobragade battled for his life, he gave three separate statements to the village tehsildar as well as the police, accusing 6 people belonging to the dominant Powar caste of setting him ablaze. They were Rushipal Tembhare, his wife and village sarpanch Madhuri Tembhare, Bhaulal Harinkhede, Punaji Thakre, Hemant Thakre, and Shriprakash Rahangdale, the deputy sarpanch. The village had 1,500 Powar families as opposed to only 40 Dalit families, and the Powars commanded political influence.

The Powars killed Sanjay Khobragade for asserting his identity as a Dalit, as an Ambdekarite, and a Buddhist. The Panchayati Samiti had in the past allowed three temples to be built for the Hindus of the village on Panchayat land. Hence, the Dalits of the village had been demanding that the Panchayati Samiti make land available to build a Buddha Vihar as well. Khobragade had been one of the prominent voices in this fight, and had been demanding that the Panchayat provide a part of the land owned by the Bahyababa Temple Trust to be allotted for building the Buddha Vihar. Notably, the President of the Temple Trust, was the same person as the deputy Sarpanch, Shriprakash Rahangdale. Their demands were dodged for years, but the trust members had finally relented, and asked Khobragade to meet them after May 16 giving the excuse of Lok Sabha election results.

It was on that night that the six accused tried to murder Khobragade. He had heard their voices distinctly before he was set ablaze. According to his statement, they said, “In our village, Mahars don’t raise their voice. How can this bloody outsider come into our town and tell us what to do? Burn him and erase all his traces”.

Since he named them in his last statements before he died, his accusation counts as a dying declaration, admissible as evidence in court. However, the police rejected and dismissed it as only a ‘suspicion’ and later claimed that Khobragade was in a drunken state and hence his statement was unreliable. The six accused were arrested initially after his death, but were soon released on bail, followed by the arrest of Khobragade’s wife Devakabai and their neighbour, Raju Gadpayle, a Dalit rickshaw-puller, who was also involved in the demand for the Buddha Vihar with Sanjay Khobragade.

The police ignored the fact that there had been an on-going conflict between Khobragade and the accused about the Buddha Vihar. Shortly after Ambedkar Jayanti in 2012, his house had been burnt down after an argument regarding the same, and Khobragade had filed over six police complaints against the accused over the years. Instead, the police blamed Devakabai, claiming that she had an affair with Raju Gadpayle, and that they conspired to kill Khobragade after he saw them in a compromising position. Both Devakabai and Gadpayle were tortured in custody and coerced into giving a confession for a crime they had not committed.

They spent four months in jail before being released on bail on August 23, 2014, but Devakabai is still awaiting justice. Victim blame was used to malign the character of a Dalit woman in order to dilute and divert the caste-based nature of the violence, intimidate her into not seeking justice for her husband, and implicating another Dalit man in the crime.

References:

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/dalit-activists-murder-police-reject-dying-declaration-villagers-say-will-fight-till-the-end/lite/#aoh=15595647214039&amp_ct=1559564726768&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s
https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/hathras-lawyers-activists-explain-how-blame-is-shifted-to-victim-s-family-in-caste-crimes_in_5f7f3d4cc5b6da9ba1ee0995
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-qyx5udGWE
https://frontline.thehindu.com/social-issues/ringing-with-hate/article7297948.ece
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI1t-WR6Lyc
https://roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7552:caste-atrocity-in-gondia-a-report&catid=119:feature&Itemid=132