June 10 was a great day for those who have been fighting for justice to an eight-year-old victim of rape and murder.
 
This is especially true for the courageous Human Rights Lawyer, Deepika Singh Rajawat who stepped forward at personal risk to defend the family of Kathua rape victim, a Muslim nomad girl who was kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and killed by Hindu fundamentalists in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir in January 2018.
 
The horrific crime had attracted international attention. 
 
Those involved in the conspiracy wanted to terrorize and humiliate Muslims in the area by using rape as a weapon.
 
On Monday, the special court in India convicted six people involved in the incident. Of them, three have been given life imprisonment, while three police officers have been sentenced for five years each for destroying the evidence.
 
Rajawat faced threats and intimidation in the deeply polarized society of India. After all, the accused enjoyed the patronage of the ruling right-wing Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), which holds power. Thanks to her advocacy, the case was transferred outside Jammu and Kashmir to ensure a fair trial.
 
While the verdict has certainly brought some relief, but if one looks at the broader picture the nomad girl has actually been let down by the Indian nation.
 
In the general election that concluded on May 19, the BJP came back to power with a brute majority. This time, the party that openly and shamelessly supported those involved in the gruesome act bagged 300 seats in the house of 543, more than 282 it captured in 2014.
 
If the Indian electorate was honest, the BJP should have been punished in these elections. Rather the party got rewarded by the Hindu majority. Apparently, the voters obsessed with the BJP’s outright sectarian agenda to transform the country into Hindu theocracy completely ignored the cries of the young girl.
 
Not only that, but the majority of voters also overlooked the fact that the girl was confined into a temple that was used for such a sacrilegious act. It seems that they weren’t even outraged over BJP folks coming out in support of the accused with the national flag.
 
The people who raped and murdered her, and those who came out on the streets to support them were merely few, but by re-electing a party that claims to be a custodian of Hindu religion and national interest the entire nation has deceived the soul of the little child.
 
Whatever may be the explanation, the May election results were in sharp contrast to the mandate of 2014 when the Prime Minister Narendra Modi ascended to power against the backdrop of the infamous Nirbhaya case.
 
In December 2012, a woman was gang raped and physically assaulted on a public bus in Delhi – the national capital of India. The victim later succumbed to her injuries. The death of Jyoti Singh Pandey – who came to be known as Nirbhaya was followed by angry protests in the capital.
 
The whole episode became a matter of shame for those in power. People thought that the government lacked will and strength to stop sexual violence on the streets of Delhi.
 
Among the demonstrators were the supporters of Modi and his party. Those opposed to the then-Congress government did not let the issue die until the next election.
 
Modi openly appealed to the voters not to forget what happened to Nirbhaya when they went to vote in the upcoming election. He categorically asked them to keep in mind the victim of Delhi rape before voting for the Lotus – the electoral symbol of BJP. Thus, the Delhi rape and murder became one of the many issues when Modi was elected to power in May 2014 with a hope for a strong government.
 
Come 2019, such drive was missing. Maybe The nomad girl wasn’t even on anyone’s mind.
 
It is pertinent to mention that the conspirators had also incited communal hatred against Muslim nomads accusing them of killing cows. The nomad girl had clearly become another victim of cow politics which has gripped the general mood of the nation ever since Modi first became the Prime Minister. Since Hindus consider a cow as a sacred animal, the self-styled cow vigilantes have intensified their hateful and violent campaign against Muslims and Christians all over the country. They continue to target these communities on suspicion of consuming beef.  
 
Modi, who never missed an opportunity to rake up the issue of Nirbhaya before his 2014 election remained silent on the sexual assault and murder of the nomad girl and did not find it necessary to reprimand his party men for supporting wrong people. 
 
Even otherwise, Modi was complicit in the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom of Gujarat during which many young Muslim girls were raped by Hindu fundamentalists. The massacre followed the burning of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims. More than 50 people had died in the incident that was blamed on Islamic extremists by Modi, who was the Chief Minister of Gujarat back then. He wasn’t punished by the electorate that time either as he got a heavy majority in the assembly election that followed the massacre.
 
It’s a shame to see that the entire nation was on its feet when a Hindu woman was raped in Delhi and kept the issue alive until Modi got elected to power in 2014, but the same nation looked the other way when the nomad girl was raped and murdered in 2018 and forgot her completely when they re-elected those who defended her killers.
 
This is despite the fact that many social justice activists continued to remind people of what happened to the nomad girl before the election began.

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Canada: Deepika Singh Rajawat – who is leading the fight for justice For Asifa’s family was honoured at a community event in Surrey, Canada on Sunday.
 
Rajawat is the legal counsel of Asifa Bano’s family. She was an eight-year-old Muslim nomad girl who was abducted by Hindu extremists in January as part of a conspiracy to create fear in the minds of Muslims and force them to flee Kathua region. Her body was later found in a forest. The forensic evidence and police investigation established that she was held captive for several days inside a temple, sedated and raped before being murdered. 
 
The arrests of the suspects, including a Special Police Officer, sparked angry protests from those owing allegiance to the ruling Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party. They wanted those arrested to be released. So much so, they hoisted the Indian national flag during the march taken out in support of the alleged perpetrators.

 
Rajawat has been facing threats on social media for standing up for Asifa – whose brutal rape and murder had caused worldwide outrage. There have been angry protests in Canada too. She also faced hostility from many male lawyers, including those defending the accused.
 
She was here to attend an annual community fair organized by Tiranjan – a progressive group of women which has been active in the South Asian community for many years. Amy Ghuman Sara who has been instrumental behind Tiranjan is known for raising awareness for gender equality. 
 
Rajawat told this writer that she has been subjected to character assassination and is distraught by an attempt to communalize the issue in the name of Hindu nationalism. She insisted that she is also a proud Hindu, but her brand of Hinduism teaches discipline and compassion, whereas those who are supporting the accused have been using abusive language against her on social media.
 
“All I am fighting against is the crime committed against a poor girl, not against any community.”
 
She asserted that she believes in the Indian constitution that is based on the principles of secularism and therefore cannot hold on to her religion when it comes to her duty. She added that nationalism does not demand that people who indulge in such heinous crimes should be supported. “What happened to a Muslim girl today can happen to a Hindu woman tomorrow.”
 
Rajawat hopes that the justice will prevail even though the prosecution is under a lot of pressure. Thanks to the efforts of the civil society, the trial of this highly sensitive case has been transferred outside Kashmir to ensure neutrality. The trial is in progress in the neighbouring state of Punjab.
 
Rajawat says that the fight is not over yet as the matter has been completely politicized under a highly polarized environment. She demanded that the Indians abroad must break their silence over ongoing atrocities under a right-wing government in India. “When people remain silent bad things grow.” 

Another lawyer, Talib Hussain, from the Gujjar Bakarwal community from which Asifa hailed, has also been battling the issue in the courts. CJP did an exclusive interview with both in April 2018.

Photo Credit: Supreem Singh

Related Articles
— How two lawyers are bringing hope for the Bakarwal community seeking justice in the Kathua Rape Case 
— SC transfers Kathua Rape and Murder case to Punjab, will monitor trial
 

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Meet the ‘Intellectuals’
The GIA comprises Meera Khadakkar (Retired District Judge, Nagpur), Monika Arora (Supreme Court Advocate), Sarjana Sharma (Journalist), Sonali Chitalkar (Professor) and Monica Aggarwal (Social activist). The group that submitted its report to Union Minister Jitendra Singh and demanded that the case be handed over to the CBI. The GIA claims they met more than 25 people including the victim’s family, the accused family members, the influential people from the Bakarwal community and others. 

Argument-1: Presence of Kashmiris in Crime Branch Team  

“Three investigating teams rapidly changed one after another within a span of 10 days from January 12 to January 23. The crime branch team consists of two ethnic Kashmiris apart from the SSP Crime Branch Jammu who is also Kashmiri. In a sensitive case like this one and interstate like Jammu and Kashmir, this matters,” notes the report. This clearly shows their communal bias given how while Jammu is Hindu majority region, Kashmir is predominantly Muslim.

The allusion to the incompetence and/or collusion of Muslim investigators in purposely tanking the case should ring enough alarm bells across civil society groups. This is also disturbing given how the charge-sheet clearly mentions that the little girl was raped and murdered because the accused wanted to scare and drive away the nomadic Muslim Bakarwal tribe from the region. The insidious communal colour becomes deeper when the report alleges that harassment by the Crime Branch is forcing Hindus to leave the Kathua region. With the scars of the Kashmiri Pandit exodus of the 90s still deep, such communally inflammatory allegations can cause further destabilisation in one of the most conflict ridden regions in the world.

Argument-2: Post Mortem does not mention Rape
The brutality of the crime had shaken people across the country forcing many to take to the streets. But the GIA report says that the post-mortem does not categorically state that the child was raped. “The charge sheet mentions gangrape by at least three persons over many days. This is not corroborated by the injuries described in the postmortem report. No such injuries are reported on the victim in the Kathua incident which according to the chargesheet is a gangrape. Postmortem report only mentions abrasions but no injuries,” states the report. This is especially ridiculous given how the J&K Police had issued a press release shooting down fake news and categorically stating that the girl had indeed been raped. 

This reeks of the popular conspiracy theory that involves two post-mortems! The theory claimed that the little girl was never raped as the first post-mortem report does not mention it. The conspiracy theory further alleges that rape was added in the second post mortem report to sensationalise the case.

Argument-3: Rape not possible at the Dev Sthan
Meanwhile, Arora maintains that rape would be impossible in a prayer hall that had multiple doors and windows and the keys of which were in possession of four village elders. “There is neither any basement nor any floor. There is only a 20×35 feet room where there is no furniture except a three feet table. There are three windows and three doors. The windows have only grills and they are not covered. You can see from outside what is going on inside. There are four keys to the Dev Sthan which are with four elders of the village. People come and go there frequently,” she said.

But this has also been debunked by The Quint in a piece that takes down multiple conspiracy theories. It says, “The Quint has visited the temple/prayer hall where the police states the girl was held captive and can certify that it is not a crowded temple. The temple is located in the middle of nowhere, with no houses adjacent to it for kilometres.” The Quint adds, “It is situated on a hilltop and is isolated from the Rasanna village which lies about a kilometre away from the hall. The walk, which leads to the village, is a lonely one. It opens up to a number of houses including the home of Sanji Ram. It is on this same path that the body of the victim was found on 17 January. The chargesheet states that that the Devisthan was exclusively manned by the main accused, Sanji Ram, to exclude any other person in the area.”

Last-ditch effort to derail Justice?
Is this yet another move to derail justice after the spectacularly juvenile attempt by lawyers to prevent the police from filing a chargesheet? Or is this a last ditch attempt by right wing sympathisers to protect the accused whose goose has virtually been cooked? Either way, these repeated endeavours to spread ridiculous and often outright incorrect information, are part of the wider conspiracy to sow the weeds of doubt in a case that has been brilliantly investigated by a team of skilled investigators… and a case that will be fought with equal elan and grace by a dedicated lawyer in the court. 

Related:

How Hate for Muslims sells and spreads on Social Media

Is a Police Press Release countering Fake News India’s ‘New Normal’?

Growing Communalism in Jammu

Report on Kathua Rape

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Rachna Singh, a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) who represents the Surrey-Grren Timbers electoral district, spoke about the Kathua case urging her fellow legislators to protect children belonging to vulnerable minorities. “Gender violence is one of the most common forms of human rights violations, often occurring during times of crisis or conflict,” said Singh.

Singh, a mother of a 10 year old daughter herself, said, “As if often the case with gendered violence, the perpetrators used this child’s body as a weapon, with the aim of intimidating her community.” Singh spoke about the efforts of several groups that helped raise awareness about the horrific case. These include Global Girl Power that organised a vigil for the little Kathua girl, the Mamta Foundation an organisation that tries to help abandoned girls in India that held posters of the minor girl at the annual Baisakhi parade and the Al Ameen Foundation that also held an event to create awareness.

Singh minced no words as she describes the plight of indigenous women in Canada, saying, “Canada has a long and violent history of violence and abuse, particularly as it pertains to indigenous women and children.” Singh said that Canadians have a moral responsibility to deter that violence and continue to invest in truth and reconciliation efforts. “This is a challenging conversation that needs to happen to put an end to this injustice,” said Singh. She concluded by exhorting her fellow Canadians to rally together to find justice for the little girl.

The entire video may be viewed here: https://www.facebook.com/RachnaSinghSGT/videos/1860130154285098/
 

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