Although Nirbhaya’s rapists were sentenced to death, there are several other rape cases that grabbed national headlines where the victims still await justice.
‘Sheila Dikshit turned us away saying she gets 500 rape complaints every day, how many could she look into?’
Several politicians, including Sonia Gandhi, made big promises for Gudiya, but nothing happened. The five-year old is on her own now.
We’re in south-west Delhi’s Dwarka. After a little wait, Gudiya’s father arrives to meet us. Passing through a labyrinth of streets, we reach Gudiya’s home. With two tiny pony tails on her head and a slate in her hand, Gudiya is playing with her younger brother and mother. She was in the hospital for four months during which she underwent six major surgeries.
Her father tells us, “The doctors say she can go to school now. She is fine. Now, the only thing that worries me is to get them admitted into a school. When the media was talking about it, everyone made big promises. Sonia Gandhi herself came to visit Gudiya. She told us that the girl’s health and education will be taken care of. Then another leader from Gandhinagar, Arvinder Singh also promised that arrangements will be made for our children’s education. But we have not received anything from the government except for what was spent on Gudiya’s treatment and surgeries.”
The country-wide uproar at the 16 December gangrape in Delhi had not yet simmered down when on 15 April 2013, two men gangraped five-year old Gudiya and left her to die in a locked room. A medical examination revealed that the rapists had inserted plastic bottles and candles inside the little girl. Wiping Gudiya’s face, her mother says, “When Gudiya went missing on 15 April, we registered a complaint with the police. But the police didn’t listen to us. Had they searched the building only, her condition would not have become so bad. Instead, the police asked us for money.”
Although a judicial action has been initiated against the two arrested rapists, Manoj Shah and Pradeep Kumar, Gudiya’s family is still fighting on several different fronts. Five months since the incident, Gudiya’s father says, “Sonia Gandhi met our daughter and left. She gave us an assurance but nothing happened. Then we approached Sheila Dikshit. She turned us away saying, ‘I get 500 rape complaints every day. How many will I look into?’
She told us to handle the matter on our own. The whole time, only the media and the Aam Admi Party supported us. The media has been with us all along. For the past five months, India Today is paying the rent of our room. A lady reporter has even agreed to teach our girl. But I’m surprised why the government is not helping us. We cannot even go back to our village because people have all sorts of things to say. Even in Delhi, we have moved houses four times since the incident.”
After a pause, he adds, “After what happened to our daughter, it is important for us to educate her. If she doesn’t study, who will support her later in life? She must learn to be self-sufficient. You know how our society treats rape victims, don’t you?”
‘My in-laws felt that if I pursued the gangrape case, it would bring disgrace to them’
After her gangrape, Ragini had to withdraw her statement from the court under strong community pressure. The court sentenced her to jail while the accused were let off.
We’re in the Atail-Idana village that comes under the Gohana tehsil of Haryana’s Sonipat district. A bunch of children are playing cricket in a field.
When we ask them the address of Sunil of the dhanuk community, they exchange suggestive smiles and then point towards a house across the field. One of them, who turns out to be Sunil’s relative, throws his bat on the ground and says, “Sunil and his parents are not home. The door will open only if one of us knocks.” The boy brings us to Sunil’s house. “Get the door opened, a lady is here,” the 12-year-old boy calls, knocking at the door.
Two girls, aged between 10 to 12 years, open the door. In the courtyard, we see a shed for buffaloes behind which a girl veiled in a sari is washing clothes near the handpump. This is Sunil’s wife, Ragini. The girls who opened the door are Ragini’s ‘family sentinels’. Ever since 28 September 2012, Ragini’s in-laws keep a close watch on her.
She is not allowed to talk to anyone. She cannot answer the door nor can she receive a call if the phone rings. If it is hot inside, she is not permitted to even sit in the courtyard and every time she has to go to the lavatory, she must take someone along. They do not trust her and hate to even look at her.
Ragini’s life was not always like this. She got married to Sunil last year and like any other young 19-year-old bride, she dreamt of a beautiful life with her husband whom she loved. But a horrific incident turned her life upside down. On 28 September 2012, Ragini was gangraped by four men for five days and four nights.
She managed to escape, but the incident left her being called a whore, a thief, and a woman without character. Despite being the victim of such a heinous crime, the girl had to bear the brunt of familial and judicial neglect. Her story paints a distressing picture of the bleak future of rape victims.
Sunil is a hawker who sells utensils and his father is also a vendor. They are not at home today. Allowing me into her single-room house, Ragini tries to send the two ‘guards’ away by engaging them in some work. She whispers, “I must send them away, or they will tell everything to my mother-in-law. I’ll be in trouble.
They always leave these girls to spy on me.” When I tell her to share anything in her heart with me, she cries and says, “I only wish to die, didi. I would have killed myself long ago. But these people do not leave me even for a moment. I am helpless.”
In September 2012, Ragini had gone to visit her parents for the first time after her wedding. Her parents belong to the dhanuk community and so their home stands at the furthermost end of Banwas village. Coming under the backward class category, this community has traditionally done the work of cleaning the houses of upper-caste people and cutting grass. But Ragini’s parents work as bonded labour and rear buffaloes on lease. Ragini’s mother, Santosh, says, “We had saved money for years to marry our daughter.
She had come home for the first time. Then, four boys kidnapped her from the railway-crossing near the village. She returned after five days in a bad condition. We wanted all the culprits to be punished. We even reported it to the police. But then the villagers and our community put pressure on us. We had no option but to withdraw the complaint.”
This incident happened in the same month of September 2012 when 20 such rape incidents in Haryana had grabbed national headlines. Ragini says, “I had a neighbour Maphi, who owns a beauty-parlour and also taught me sewing. On 28 September, she told me that my husband had called several times and wanted to meet me at the crossing. But he was not there.”
Instead, she was kidnapped by two men, Sanjay and Sunil, from Gohana Phatak. In a white car, they took her to an isolated room in the middle of a rice-field on Gohana-Khakrohi Road. Two other men were present there – Anil from Ahmedpur Majra and Shravan from Hitadi. Ragini continues her story, “I was made to sniff something that made me unconscious. When I regained consciousness, I was lying in a room that housed a water pump in the middle of a field. They were upon me, biting and pinching me.
They watched dirty videos on their mobiles, laughed and clawed at me. I was without clothes for four days. They took me to Kurukshetra and from there to Panipat. I was wearing some jewellery that I had received on my wedding – ear rings, anklets and a ring. They sold everything and handed me an old, torn salwar kameez. I begged them to leave me, but they only laughed at me. Somehow I got the opportunity and secretly phoned my father. The police came to rescue me. But by then, five days had already passed.”
Ragini and her family claim that Maphi was involved in the crime too, but they had to get her released. Santosh tells us, “After we reported the incident, we came to know that all the four boys were from our community. For the first three months, while supporting us, the villagers insisted that we get Maphi released, while the four boys should stay in jail. It became a matter about the honour of the village.
As a result, we had to withdraw our statement against Maphi. Then we started getting pressurising to do the same for the four men as well. For 10 days, people from our community sat outside our door. The elders from the boys’ families also arrived. Then Ragini’s in-laws came too. They said that their son’s life was being threatened. A girl cannot marry again and her in-laws might not have taken her back. So we had to withdraw all the charges.”
Ragini says, “I was helpless. My in-laws felt that if I pursued the case, it would bring disgrace to them. My husband’s life was also in danger. Everyone said that if I wanted my in-laws to accept me again, I should change my statement before the court and say that I was not raped, that during those five days I was at my in-law’s place.
I was told to state that the medical reports were such because I had been intimate with my husband. I did what I was told. Everyone was present there. I couldn’t speak the truth.” On 24 April 2013, additional district and sessions judge Manisha Batra sentenced Ragini to 10 days in jail and a fine of Rs 500 for giving a false statement in the court.
Vice-president of the Rashtriya Janvadi Mahila Samiti, Jagmati Sangvan calls Ragini’s story a tragic example of the societal pressure put on rape victims in the absence of rehabilitation policies. She says, “It is one of the most heinous rape incidents. Even the judiciary could not see that the girl was under pressure and passed the verdict against her. Clearly, the ground reality is that even the new laws have failed to give justice to women.”
Meanwhile, Ragini’s nightmare continues. When asked to lodge a complaint with the police, she says, “There is no question of it. Everybody here thinks I am guilty. They say that I knew those men and had run off with them to have fun. Even if I comb my hair or sit in the courtyard, my young sister-in-law and brother-in-law pass comments like ‘Who are you enticing now? Haven’t you been satisfied yet?’
They call me vulgar and cheap. My mother-in-law taunts me for not bearing children. Even my husband doesn’t understand. He also believes that I ran away willingly. I can’t even breathe and you are talking of going to the police! What was my fault? I would want to see those criminals get a heavy punishment. But it’s not in my hands. I am supposed to stay silent. So I stay silent.”
‘People are not pleased that I am fighting so hard against my rape by the MLA’
Deserted by her family, Neelu has been fighting a rape case against a local MLA for the past two and a half years all by herself.
Dressed in a black track suit with her hair tied in a bun, Neelu Nishad’s personality has the same bitter contradiction as that between her small hut in Khati Bundelkhand and her attire. The contradiction in her personality has resulted from the social and judicial struggle she had been putting up for a long time. We are in Shahbazpur village in Uttar Pradesh’s Banda district.
Neelu belongs to a backward caste in Bundelkhand, and has been single-handedly fighting a case against a strong, upper caste, local politician. According to Neelu, BSP’s local MLA Purshottam Naresh Dwivedi had raped her twice, gruesomely assaulted her and then with the help of his aides implicated her in a false theft case for which she was sent to jail. She was only 17.
There are several laws to protect the identity of victims in case of sexual violence. Yet this case is that rare rape incident which is known by the name of the victim. Her fight for justice against the ruling party’s local MLA in one of the country’s most backward regions, Bundelkhand, has rendered Neelu a strong person emotionally. But a little while later she reveals to us that she wants to live in another place, under a different identity.
Expressing her desire to lead a normal life, she says, “I have nothing to do with these parties and politics. I only want justice and then I’ll go somewhere far from here, where no one knows my name. So many people labour hard and live in the cities. I’ll work as a labourer and earn my livelihood.” She turns silent. Evidently, this girl with an iron will is shattered inside.
On reaching the Naraini tehsil of Banda’s Shahbazpur village, if you ask for Neelu’s address, everybody has the same answer – the hut in front of which there is a group of five policemen and a guard. Neelu lives in a single-room hut. When we reach there, we find her listening to old songs on her phone. She turns it off saying, “I have a constant headache. To get my mind off the case, I listen to these songs.”
She begins by asserting, “Today I am 18 years and seven months old. When the incident took place, I was 17 years and two months old. My mother passed away when I was very young. My father was actively involved with the BSP for the past 17 years. He managed the affairs at the local panchayat level. Dwivedi was also an MLA from Naraini. Once he paid us a visit. He saw me and asked me to bring him a glass of water.
When I brought it, he enquired in which class I studied. I said I didn’t know and told him to drink water. He said to my father, ‘Your daughter is so beautiful and doesn’t speak much. Send her to me. We’ll educate her, train her and get her married.’ My father even took me to his house. But I refused to stay there. And since then he was after my life.”
Because of poverty, Neelu had been sent to her maternal grandparent’s house in Hamirpur village after her mother’s death. After a few days, she was sent to live with her aunt in Lachchipur. In the winter of 2010, she was kidnapped for the first time from Lachchipur.
She recalls, “I was asleep when I was picked up. They tied my hands, my feet and my mouth. Rajju Patel, Rajiv, and all of them were the MLA’s men. They took me to Mahui jungle and held me captive there for three days. They kept me hungry and would torture me by thrusting my face in cold river water at night saying how dare I turn down the MLA’s offer. My father first lodged a complaint with the Naraini police station and then at the Atarra police station. But his pleas went unheard.
Then the MLA started working on his plan. He tricked my father into believing that I was kidnapped by goons. He told him that he could rescue me but on the condition that I should stay at his bungalow. He also told my father not to worry as he would get me married. The men brought me to his house. I was very ill. In my father’s presence, he said, ‘No more crying now. Cook food here, work for us. We’ll find a groom for you and get you married. Work for him, and work for us.’ At that time, we didn’t realise what sort of work he was talking about.”
On 8 December 2010, Neelu was recovered from Atarra village and started working for BSP MLA Purshottam Naresh Dwivedi. As her father, Achchelal Nishad was a BSP worker, the family trusted Dwivedi. But the night between 9 and 10 December turned out to be a nightmare for Neelu.
Recalling the assault, she says, “After work, I went to sleep. Suddenly he came and removed the sheet I was wrapped in. Then he said, ‘Didn’t you understand what I’d said?’ and asked me to remove my clothes. I begged him, ‘Sahib, beat me, give me trash to eat but please don’t do this, I am a daughter to you’. I kept crying but he tore my clothes with a blade.
Then he began biting and scratching me like a beast. There were cuts on my face, my whole body was swollen and my feet were bloodied. Then abusing me, he threatened me to stay quiet about it or he would shoot me. I kept crying the whole day and the blood didn’t stop flowing. He returned in the evening and repeated his act. The next evening I called my father. He told me he’d come in the morning. But at night Dwivedi attacked me again and I somehow managed to escape from the back-door.
It was so cold that I couldn’t even see the path. I spent the night hiding in a drain along the Turra road. In the morning, the MLA came looking for me with the police. When they found me, he sent the police away and his men started beating me like animals. They kicked and punched me. My entire body was covered in blood. Then one of them named Raavan tore my clothes and pushed the barrel of a gun in my urinary tract. I fell unconscious.
Then the MLA took me to the police station. There I came to know that a false charge of theft had been levelled against me and at about 8pm, I was taken to the jail. The MLA threatened me that if I didn’t confess to the charge of theft, he would kill me. But in the court, I told the truth. The media also got to know.”
As the report made headlines, the case took a political turn. After speeches delivered by Congress and SP’s state ministers, the then Chief Minister Mayawati first expelled Purshottam Naresh Dwivedi from the party and a month later issued orders for Neelu’s release.
She also ordered the state’s crime branch to probe into it. After the investigation was carried out, a chargesheet was filed against Purshottam Naresh, Raavan, Virendra Garg, Suresh Mehta alias Raghuvanshi Dwivedi, Rajendra Shukla and five other accused. On Mahesh Salve’s PIL filed in 2012, the investigation was handed to the CBI.
In addition to all sections in the previous chargesheet, the CBI booked Dwivedi for rape under Section 376. Both Dwivedi and Raavan’s bail pleas have been rejected by the Supreme Court thrice. They are incarcerated in the Lucknow jail as the case is still going on at the CBI special court in Lucknow.
Several prominent leaders of BJP, Congress and SP have visited Neelu. They include Rahul Gandhi, Jaya Prada, Smriti Irani, Rita Joshi Bahuguna and Vivek Singh. Many parties also extended financial help. But in the course of this fight, Neelu has lost a great deal. Although her family stood by her in the beginning, today they do not want to even talk to her.
Almost breaking down, she says, “I am only waiting for justice, didi. Once I get it, I will go away. Nobody talks to me… my father, my brother, my relatives, my neighbours… no one. They have deserted me. They feel bad that there are policemen outside my hut, that politicians and media persons visit me. All of them think that I raised my voice too loud against the injustice done to me. But is there a softer way to protest against something like what happened to me? I have gone through so much to get justice. I was made to repeat my statements so many times, and I repeated them.
The villagers and people from my community are not pleased that I am fighting so hard. But how can I not fight for justice after what they did to me? Even now, my body aches. In jail, the blood didn’t stop flowing for 20 days. I went without food for 15 days. I didn’t even get any medical treatment. The stitch marks are still there on my urinary tract. They tore apart my body. How can I forget it? Now, if I am left fighting this battle alone, let it be so. But I will fight it till the very end.”
‘We haven’t been able to forget how we were gangraped’
The influential Gowli community wanted to teach the Kosre family a lesson and so they gangraped their women. The three victims of the Bhomatola gangrape case relate what happened that night, nine years ago.
We’re in Nirjhar village in the Seoni district of Madhya Pradesh, 900 kilometres from Delhi. Govardhan Kosre, a resident of the dalit colony in the village, waits for us impatiently. On reaching his five-room pucca house, we are taken to the innermost room. We’re here to meet Radha Bai Kosre (50), Kaushalya Bai Kosre (50) and Maya Bai Kosre (30).
The Kosre family is not native to Nirjhar village. They arrived here from their native Bhomatola village in Bhom district nine years ago, after around 150 men of the Gowli community attacked their home on the night of 8 July 2004. These three women of the family were alone at home that night when a mob of 150 men broke open the door of their house, dragged them out and 16 of them gang-raped the women.
The Gowlis are a pastoral Yadav community who are essentially milkmen. There were 125 Gowli and 12 dalit families in Bhomatola at that time. On 4 July 2004, a minor girl belonging to the Gowli community named Santoshi Chandravanshi went missing. A little later, the Gowlis came to know that Govardhan Kosre’s nephew, Nitesh Kosre, was also missing. Santoshi and Nitesh knew each other well as Santoshi used to visit the Kosre family.
Meanwhile, news spread like wildfire in the village that a dalit boy has eloped with a Gowli girl. Making it an issue of honour, the Gowlis plotted to gangrape the women of the Kosre family. After this incident, a steady rise in caste-based discrimination in Bhomatola forced the Kosre family to be rehabilitated to Nirjhar village.
Radhabai, Kaushalyabai and Maya are sitting quietly in the furthermost corner of their house. They remain silent for the most part in the beginning. They only say that they wish to forget the incident and do not want to discuss it. But when they are told that their tale of horror would provide a strong case for how women around the country fall prey to caste-based violence, they consent to speak. Recollecting her village, Maya says, “Ours was not a usual dalit family.
Unlike the rest, we had our own field. It received water directly from the canal. We even had fresh-water wells in our house. The men and women in our family did not work for the Gowlis. My husband was secretary in the panchayat. We wanted our children to get computer training. I think the Gowlis were annoyed with this. They never wanted us to have our own wells, our own field and work for ourselves. Dalits were supposed to be at their mercy. How could they bear to see us sending our children to school or one of us to be a secretary in the panchayat?
When the girl and the boy went missing, we assured those people that we would help in looking for them. That night too, all the men in our house had all gone to Nagpur in search of the girl. But the fact is that it was never about the girl. The Gowlis had always had a grudge against us, we clearly felt it.”
She adds, “This incident gave them the opportunity they had been looking for. More than their girl eloping with our boy, it was a matter of showing the ‘right’ place to a prospering and strong dalit family living in a Gowli-dominated village.”
During the conversation, the three women start sobbing. Wiping her eyes with the corner of her soiled sari, Maya continues, “I had got married two months ago. On the night of 8 July, we were anxiously waiting for the men to return. The Gowlis had warned us that if we didn’t return the girl by 8 July, they’d ruin us. Tension had built up in the village right from the evening. But what happened was beyond our wildest imagination.”
Maya was the youngest of the three. While Radha was gangraped by five men and Kaushalya by two, Maya was gang-raped by nine men. Recalling the events of the night, Maya says, “It was around 11 at night when they began fiercely knocking at our door. In a short while, the door broke open.” Pointing towards Radha, she says, “First they dragged her outside, and then me and Kaushalya tai. There were many of them and we were dragged down the road in front of everyone.
We cried, screamed and yelled, but nobody listened to us. Our clothes were torn, we were beaten and they abused us in vulgar language. Then they took my mother-in-laws to separate corners and took me to the other end of the village and raped us.”
It’s been nine years since the Bhomatola gang rape incident, but their wounds are still fresh. Kaushalya Bai says, “We’re alive somehow. Years may have passed, but we haven’t been able to forget how we were gangraped and how the entire village saw us being dragged on the streets in torn clothes. We haven’t been able to forget that night. We are dead on the inside.”
The 12 accused have been sentenced to life imprisonment in the gangrape case. But this has not eased the suffering of the Kosre family. Referring to the present state of the three women, Govardhan Kosre complains about the indifferent attitude of the state and central government. He has a long list of unfulfilled promises that were made to him. “We were uprooted from our village and given a piece of land outside Narjhar village.
How could we live outside a village? We had to spend our own money to build a house here in the dalit colony. Our land, our canal, and our wells, everything was taken away. The land they gave us was barren. We haven’t yet received the compensation amount promised by the government. We asked for guns for our own safety, but all we got was a license. The women in our family were promised jobs but only Maya got a job of a peon in a nearby school.”
Govardhan says, “Now I feel that those promises were made because the case had made headlines. Our government and administration are insensitive towards rape victims. Especially when the woman is a dalit, they turn a deaf ear to the complaint.”
As Maya prepares to leave for school, she adds, “Everyone in the school knows why I got this job. Here, no man would take a woman back after something like this happens to her, but my husband accepted me. Meanwhile, this job is a struggle in itself, but I have to earn for the family. Every single day when I am on duty, I am reminded that I got this job because I was gangraped.”
‘I want to study further and become a judge. Then I’ll make sure to pass judgements on rape cases quickly’
Zahira was only 13-years-old when she was subjected a horrific gangrape. Despite an endless wait for justice, she has managed to remain steadfast while the main accused in the case is still free.
Wearing a green salwar-kurta, with her hair braided neatly, Zahira comes to meet us at a busy road in front of Lucknow Assembly. Carrying a bundle of books wrapped in an old plastic bag, she smiles enthusiastically on seeing us. In her smile, there is no hint of the horrific incident which took place one evening eight years ago when four men kidnapped her from an isolated road of a posh colony.
Nobody could have imagined that the girl being dragged into the car would later be counted amongst one of the country’s most appalling gangrapes. Zahira was only 13-years-old when she was subjected to burns using cigarettes and wounded badly with the barrel of a gun.
Looking at Zahira now, on the face of it, one sees a strong person who is hoping to get justice. But the country’s legal system is testing her patience.
Zahira’s poor family had migrated from Assam decades ago. Except for Zahira, who speaks in a pure UP dialect, many of her family members cannot even speak Hindi fluently. It takes us 30 minutes to reach Zahira’s house. All this while, she is quiet. Then as if staring into nothingness, she says, “I want to study further and be a judge. Then I’ll pass the judgements quickly in cases of other such girls. I often think that it’s been so many years, why haven’t I received justice yet?” She wipes the tears that silently flow from the corners of her eyes and goes silent.
Unlike other victims, she doesn’t shout and cry narrating her tale. After the gangrape, the subsequent struggles with the police, judiciary and society, in addition to an economic and mental breakdown left the girl numb. But she still stands firm in her struggle for justice against the six politically connected men who barbarically raped her when she was 13.
We are in the drawing room of her house along with her parents. Three policemen are relaxing in a tent outside the front door. Zahira’s father is a scrap dealer. To help the family out, Zahira also worked as a maid in some houses in Aashiana colony. On 2 May 2005, she was returning home from work in the evening along with her five-year old brother. As they reached the main road of the colony, four men came in a Santro car and dragged her inside.
Zahira recalls, “Before I could make sense of anything, they rolled the windows up and sped off. Initially there were just four men. Then at Nishatganj, two more joined in. The six of them tore my clothes. They were abusing me loudly and laughing. Then they started watching obscene videos on their mobiles. They made me watch it too, hit me and burnt me with cigarettes.
They threw me on the floor beneath the back seat. They were all yelling loudly and took turns to scratch and pinch me. The more I begged and cried, the harder they slapped, punched and kicked me. They pulled at my hair and started plucking my nails. Then beating me, they raped me. They even had a gun and Gaurav Shukla and his friends hit me with the gun’s barrel. Then they inserted it inside my urinary tract and burned the area with cigarettes. I was bleeding profusely and was almost unconscious. Then I remember the car reached a farm house.
They pulled me out and dragged me in that naked state to a room. They threw me on the bed and all of them were on me. They were gnawing and chewing every part of my body; beating, abusing, burning me. Then I heard Gaurav Shukla talk to someone on phone. He was saying, ‘If you’ve brought the girl, then kill her after the work is done.’ I knew they were going to kill me too. But they left me to die on the roadside.”
In the Aashiana gangrape case, six men were arrested, including Gaurav Shukla, Faizan, Asif Siddiqui, Bhartendu Misra, Saurabh Jain and Aman Bakshi. The lower court sentenced Faizan to life imprisonment while Bhartendu Misra and Aman Bakshi were sentenced to 10 years in prison. Since Asif Siddiqui and Saurabh Jain were below 18 years of age, the court declared them as juveniles.
But soon after this, both of them died in separate road accidents. Faizan, Bhartendu and Aman are in jail and have appealed against the judgement in the high court. But the main accused in the case, Gaurav Shukla, is free even today. Gaurav is a relative of SP leader Arun Shankar Shukla who is going to contest the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Unnao. A close associate of SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, Arun Shankar has a criminal background.
Madhu Garg, the UP head of Rashtriya Janvadi Mahila Sangathan, has been standing with Zahira and her family in their fight for justice for the past eight years. She says, “It is plainly a poor girl’s struggle against the political mafia of UP. With money and power, they have been dragging the case for the past eight years. Initially, they made every effort to prove the main accused Gaurav to be a juvenile.
His school records were changed, a fake certificate of ChayaPublic School was prepared and they even attempted to seize his birth certificate from Lucknow Municipal Corporation. Then his lawyers proved him a juvenile in a forged case, and tried to use the same judgement in this case.”
She continues, “They have been pressurising Zahira’s family for so long; sometimes with money, sometimes with threats. Every time the lower court passes a judgement, they approach the higher courts to challenge it. For the past eight years, the case has become centred on proving Gaurav a juvenile. His lawyer is known to drag cases for decades. He openly asks Zahira’s father in the court, ‘how long will you fight?’ Zahira has been summoned 26 times to face direct interrogation.
She has been interrogated only five times. The courage of Zahira and her father must be saluted as they have faced the torment for eight years and are still standing strong. If it is taking us so long to get justice even with all the pressure that media and our civil society has put, one can imagine what the plight of hundreds of other victims must be, who cannot even come out in the open to speak of the violence done to them.”
When asked about the punishment her perpetrators received, Zahira doesn’t respond. In his broken Hindi, her father replies, “You see, a woman has two separate holes for urine and menstruation to pass – the urinary tract and the vagina. When a barrel of a gun is inserted in your 13-year-old daughter in such a way that both the holes become one, and then the wound is burnt with cigarettes, what punishment would you demand for this?
If your daughter returns home one night, her body burnt with cigarettes, slashed with blades, her nails plucked, and soaked in blood, what punishment would you ask for? No justice can ever reduce the pain. We die every day while Gaurav Shukla is free and married. No matter what they do, fill my house with treasures or shoot me, I won’t back off. Even if I have to sell everything for it, I’ll do it, but I’ll fight till the end.”
(With Inputs from: Kajol Singh, Anushka Trivedi, Khaja Pasha, Arhaan Faraaz & Rajesh Yadav)
