Tehelka.com-Where a Rapist is Considered a Real Man

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Where a rapist is considered ‘a real man’

Police indifference, panchayat interference and a regressive mindset ensure that rapes in Haryana will never stop, say Sai Manish and Priyanka Dubey

Fir st published on 22 October 2012

BEYOND

T HE chowmein and the Om Prakash Chautala jokes, the scourg e of rapes is very real inHaryana. So r eal that it’s hair-raising . So real, it even makes on e wo nder whethercalling Haryana the rape capital is pol itically incorr ect.

Sample this. On 8 December 2010, in the little kno wn villag e of Pillu Kheda in Jinddistrict, a 13-year-o ld g irl was abducted by four boys, raped an d left by the roads ide. Theg irl so mehow manag ed to cr awl to a brick kiln for help, only to be raped again by two workers th ere. When she was final ly l et g o in the even ing , an autorickshaw dr iveroffered to give her a lift, on ly to rape her again and dump her o n th e same road. Left fordead and crying for help, the young teen was picked up by a truck dr iver and his aide, who — not surpr is ing ly by n ow — raped her repeatedl y for nine days. Th e po lice

eventually found th e girl at a woman’s h ouse in Panipat after her father had filed amissing complaint.

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Illustration: Sudeep Chaudhuri

custody, but activists s ay four rapists were l et off after the panch ayat intervened. Th is has been thefamiliar pattern in almost al l r ape cases in Haryana. A g ir l is raped — g an graped in most cases — and thepolice go through the motions of ar resting a few people, onl y to set them free after the panch ayatintervenes on their behal f. No on e cares whathappens to th e victim, no t a thought is spared; in

fact, she is often fo rced to leave the vill age andnever come back again.

Instead of serving as a deterrent, the Pill u Khedarape case on ly seemed to encourag e similaroccurences. In a g hastly reminder of th e 2010 rape,in July 2011, a 3½-year-o ld g irl was raped by threemen in the vill age. A year l ater, the police arr estedthe rapis ts and filed a char gesheet in August 2012. A look at the recor ds of 2012 in the DSP office inSafido, Jind, reveals a sho ckin g picture. In a space

of five months, between February an d June, a town o f barely 3 ,000 peopl e had witnessedsix rapes. Rapes have no t on ly become commonplace in Pillu Kheda, they are the nor m. Anoth er case reco rded o n 21 September was of a Dal it wo man raped by th ree men in herho use, who al so filmed the heinous act on th eir mobile phon es. It was on ly when the woman ’s 7-year-o ld daug hter saw her moth er being raped fr om the win do w an dscreamed for help that the rap ists left. In this case, the woman h ad clearl y identified allthr ee men, but the pol ice is yet to prepare a char gesheet, waiting ins tead for thecustomary 60-day period to end before acting .

The speed at which police work is don e is a major cause for concern in Haryana. “Thelaxity of the police is shameful,” says Jagmati Sang wan, state president o f the All IndiaDemocratic Women’s Association (AIDWA). “There is a rape epidemic in Haryana andthe main r eason is that instead of putting culpr its behind bars , the cops target activists who raise th eir voice against the system.” Even as repeated rapes catch a s lumberingpol ice unawares, many believe that deterrence cannot work in Haryana g iven thereg ressive mindset in th e state, symbolised by the heavy interference of panchayats inevery sphere of life, more so in cases of r ape.

In Durjanpur vill age, Jind, Balwant alias Krish an , a Dalit of the Go sain caste, sitsoutside his h ut on the outskirts o f the vill age. It’s been six years s ince her sch oo lteacherraped Krishan ’s 16-year-o ld daugh ter Rani* inside a classr oom. An academically weak student, Rani was l ured with a pr omise to elevate her to the next class and taken by surprise as PT instr uctor Rameshwar raped her inside the roo m while Maths teacherRam Kumar Punia s at guard outside. Both Rameshwar and Punia belon g to the Jat caste.Krishan gestures with his eye towards th e panchayat members who keep an unrelenting watch on him. “Speak to th e sar panch . I have noth ing to say,” he says.

It’s difficult to tell if it is a sense of loss or intimidation that suppresses memor ies of thedays when Krishan and h is daughter became the talk of a who le nation. When theattention died down, he took Rani out of sch ool and married her off in another villag e,never again to set foot in the vill age “she had brough t disrepute to”.

Caste, like police inaction and pan chayat interference, plays a major rol e in how rape victims ar e perceived in Har yan a. As th e 14 vil lag es surrounding Durjanpur ar e

dominated by the Punia clan , it was decided tha t Rani would tell th e court that Punia h adon ly “insulted” her while Rameshwar, who belon ged to neighbouring Uklana town, wasthe actual rapist. A session s court sen tenced Rameshwar to 10 years o f impriso nment while Punia was declar ed not g uil ty. No one knows what tr an spired in th e time when th eg irl h ad initiall y claimed that two men had raped her an d when she recorded that one just mock ed her af ter she was raped. For in Durjanpur , like hundr eds of oth er vil lag es in



Haryana, fear triumphs over truth, false hono ur pr evails o ver justice and clan l oyaltiesoften dictate statements of rape victims.

Between Jan uary and August this year, there have been 455 repor ted cases of r ape inHaryana; hundr eds go unrepor ted. “There is no fear o f the law in Haryana,” says Hisar - based advo cate Rajat Kalsan , fightin g th e Dabra case in volving th e rape of a 16-year-oldDalit gir l. “That’s because most o f the administrative machinery, the state police and th e judiciary is do minated by peopl e wh ose relatives have a major hold o n panch aya ts in th estate. The Jats have terror ised the Dalits an d backward castes and have become a law on to themselves.” Although women acro ss cas tes have been raped, most victims ar eDalits.

Even though khap panchayats strictly oppose same gotramarriages, they are silent when a girl is raped within a family

The caste factor pl ays out again an d ag ain with every reported instance of rape.Puneeta’s*, 19, a Dalit g irl fr om Banwasa vill age of Son ipat district, is on e such h or ro r

stor y. Marr ied in July, Puneeta was visiting her marital home, when tragedy befell h er.“On 28 September, when everyone had g on e to work , and Puneeta was alon e at home,our neigh bour Maafi came and told h er that her husband Sunil was waiting for her atthe railway ga te nearby,” says Puneeta’s 18-year-ol d bro ther, G urmeet. “Initiall y, Puneeta was reluctant to leave th e house empty, but when Maafi in sisted, sh e l eft to meet h erhusband. He was anyway supposed to come the next day to take her ho me.”

At the crossing , Puneeta did n ot meet her husband, but two youths, Sun il an d San jay from nearby Khan dari villag e, who fo rced her in to a car and dr ove away. They weresoon joined by two more men from Ahemadpur Manjra, and tog ether they took Puneetato a deserted shed in th e middle of a far m. There they raped and beat her r epeatedly for

the next five days. At the family’s complaint, th e police arrested th e four rapists an d Maafi. Puneeta’sfamily is waiting for justice to be done. But, justice is a mere word in Haryana, notnecessar ily concomitant with a cr ime like rape. After all , the state has th e mos t skewedsex ratio in th e countr y. There has to be something to that.



‘The guilty s hould be punis hed, but if theboy is not guilty and the girl is known to

s leep aro und with many men, then we donot enco urage a po lice investigation’

Daljit Singh

Sarpanch, Dhani Pirawala villagePhotos : Arun Sehrawat

, , bel ieves the reason fo r the in cr easing cr imesagain st women in Haryana is the tendency to lo ok down upon women. “The society here is sopatriarchal and male-dominated that men are no tready to accept women as equals or even h umans,”he says.

Prasad talks of the hypocrisy in th e khap system.

“Even th e khap panchayats have maintained doublestandards in matters r elating to women,” he adds.“While they strictly oppose same gotr a marriages,they are at the same time silen t when peopl e rape women within th eir own famil ies . Th ere are only 830 g irl s fo r every 1,000 boys here. The sk ewed sexratio is certainly one of the reason s for th eincreasing rapes, but the bigg er reason is the socialattitude. Women are seen as objects of consumptionthat ar e available to be used and silenced if they protest. This situation is con venient for the people

here and that is why they won’t let it chan ge.” A very disturbing observation, but on e that ring s true.

Khap panchayats have recently pr essed on loweringthe age limit of marr iage to 16 years . Their arg ument is that early marriag e will h elp young peo pl e fulfil l th eir sexual desires an d h ence, r apes wil l not h appen. A view thathas sho cking ly found an echo in th e words of fo rmer ch ief minister and INLD leader,Om Prakash Ch autala, who co mpared 21st century India to the medieval ag e of Mugha lrulers . “Even during the Mughal era, gir ls were married off at a very young age topro tect them from rapes,” said Chautala.

Rapes have almost doubled in Haryana in the past seven years. From 386 cases in 2004, it has jumped to 733 in 2011

Suneeta Tyagi, who runs Samta Mool ak Mahila San g than, an NGO in Goh ana, saysraping women is a way of l ife in Haryana. “Although Goh ana (the town where 19-year-old Puneeta was raped for five days) is a small town of Son ipat district, rapes ar e very common here,” she says. “Last year in May, a first year l aw student was gang raped nearher co ll ege campus, the Bhag at Phool Sing h Mahila Vishwavidyala o f Khanpur Kalan .The main r eason behin d such incidents is the call ous attitude tha t men have towards

women. Peopl e rape women fea rlessly wh ile th e police is completel y absen t from thescene.”

Tyagi adds that much o f it has to do with the political pr essure that pol ice underg o an dthe compulsion s o f serving in a patriarch al society. “The administration and po lice keepmum because they ar e always under pol itical pressure. Everybody in G oh ana ispolitically connected with some big-sh ot pol itician. Support fr om the kh aps further boosts th eir moral e. Everybody believes here th at th ey can eas ily g et away af ter raping a woman . In most cases, the accused forces th e victim to co mpromise and k eep her mouthshut,” adds Tyag i.

Al th ough Gohan a DSP Yashpal Khatan a r ubbishes al l th ese char ges, what he offers asan explanation fo r the frequency of rapes is deeply disturbing . “Girl s are easily infl uenced these days,” says the DSP. “They wear western cl othes, so the n umber o f gang rapes is incr easing here.” The chowmein arg ument somehow begins to make sensenow. After all, this is on e of the keepers of law talking .



Wise old men? Panchayat members in Durjanpur village of Jind district

Latest fig ures released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) confir m Haryana’sno tor iety in crimes again st women. In the past seven years, the number o f rape cases inHaryana h as al most doubled. From 386 r ape cases in 2004, it jumped to 733 cases in2011, with on ly 13 percent convictions. Th is lack of fear among perpetrators hascombined with th e fear amon g victims to cr eate Haryana’s spir all ing rape epidemic.

Besides, there’s always the inaction o f the state pol ice and their subservience topanchayats. “It saves them the pain of doing an investigation an d our village also doesno t get a bad name,” says Daljit Singh , Sarpanch of Dhan i Pirawala village near Hisar, where a 14-year-old was raped in February th is year. “Wh oever is guil ty will be pun ished, but if th e boy is not g uil ty and the g ir l is known to sleep ar ound with man y men , then wedo n ot encourage a police investigation.”

Local pol ice officials’ attitude towards victims does no t help matters either. In th eBhuna Pol ice Station o f Fatehabad district, Sub-Inspector Praveen Sing h s its in aspotless white kurta pyjama. Looking more like a panchayat leader than a po liceman,Sing h’s attitude reflects the same apathy seen in G oh ana DSP Yashpal Khatan a. “How can you rape a woman forcibly when she doesn ’t want it?” asks Sing h. “Mos t cases weget here are motivated. Recentl y, a woman came and co mplained that her husband’s broth er had raped her . I wonder what her husband was do ing when she was bein graped? When we went to investigate, all thr ee of them had jumped into the canal an dcommitted suicide. Now, how are we to take such cases serio usly?”

The Bhuna Police Station h as a particular ly ing lor ious past. In 1999, long beforePraveen had joined the for ce, in Khajuri villag e, Atma Ram, a land lo rd, along with h isson s and drivers, brutally r aped a woman for more than five mon ths an d kept her as a bonded labo urer . Th is case attr acted nationwide atten tio n an d former ch ief min ister OmPrakash Chautala h ad even call ed for imposition of President’s r ule in the state. Thepol ice was fo rced to fil e an FIR almost th ree weeks after the incident came to light, but



later dismissed the case saying it was motivated, that th e Dalit woman had tried to fr amethe landl ord because she was not g iven her sh are of the harvest for working on AtmaRam’s fields.

When TEHELKA vis ited Kh ajuri and tr ied to tr ace th e victim Lal o Bai and h er fa ther , it was revealed that while she had died in 2000, h er fa th er had been dr iven out of the vil lag e. Atma Ram tur ned out to be th e r ichest man in the vil lag e with a mansion an dfarmhouses in various locations. In Khajuri, as across Haryana’s villages, approachingthe pol ice against the migh ty and the powerful s eems a deadly option . It’s much better tosimply suffer in h orr ific silence.

MANY BELIEVE that a r egr essive mindset, coupled with po lice indifference andpanchayat interference, has ensured that deterrence agains t rape will no t work inHaryana. “Pol ice always lodg es the FIR. After tha t, when we arrest the perpetrator s, thepanchayat intervenes an d presses for an out-of-court settlement,” says Saurabh Singh,SP, Jind. “If the case so meho w reaches the courts, then witnesses fr om the vill age turnho stile. In some cases, witnesses whose statements were recorded before the magistratedo n ot even turn up for the first hearing under pr essure from the panchayats,” he adds.

In the much-publicised 9 September Dabra r ape case, ( Dalit girl. Gangraped. Filmed . by Soumik Mukh erjee, 6 October), where a 16-year-o ld Dalit g irl was gan g raped by a dozenupper cas te Jat men, one of th e accused, Sunil al ias Gh ars i, had th e complete backin g of the villag e panch ayat. The panch ayat leaders ar e believed to have even met the IGP ASChawla to g et an assuran ce that “their boy” would no t be prosecuted. On being refused, acro wd blocked the Funwara Cho wk in Hisar. Later, when Sunil was paraded before theg irl in the Test Identification Parade (TIP), she even refused to identify him.

In every panch ayat one hears an axiom nar rated with pr ide by the landlo rds : “If a Jathas no t had sex with his sir i’s (farm labour’s) wife and daughter, then h e is not worthy of cal ling h imself a Jat.” A very tell ing commentary on th e prevailing mindset in thestate.

Adds Anju, who works with th e AIDWA in Rohtak: “A 15-year-old g ir l was gan graped ina nearby kacchi gadhi locality of Roh tak. Her family was involved in the cr ime. Thesituation is so bad that no woman can think o f venturing out in the city after 6 pm. Menkn ow that women can no t refuse, canno t defy. A woman has no o ther option but toaccept wha tever is done to her. Men here kno w tha t the cops and pol iticians are withthem, so they just rape women. Use them and then thr ow them away. The whole so cio-political framework encourages crime against women, protects criminals and burdensthe victim with the respon sibility of the violence done to her . Altho ugh th is happens toDalit women more, no on e is really safe here.”

Seems l ike, in Haryana, to be a woman is to be the wor st k ind o f Dalit — the kind that was born to be raped.

Sai Manish is a Senior Correspondent with [email protected]

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*Names of all rape victims have been changed to protect their identities

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