Unnao, Lucknow: A mob gathered in the evening and torched the thatched brick house of a gang rape survivor in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh while the villagers stood watching silently. Minutes later, the two infants sleeping on the cot outside were flung into the raging flames.
The mob then moved to beating up the 14-year-old survivor and her mother with sticks, all the while threatening them to withdraw the gang rape case. While her mother kept begging the mob to stop, the 14-year-old limped through the village crying for help. But all she got were blank stares. A few villagers even shooed her away and shut the door in her face.
This is Lal Kheda village in Unnao. And this is the latest in a long list of hard battles that the teenager has had to fight — from being gang raped at the age of 13, giving birth to a son, seeing her rapists roam free on bail, and then her house set on fire for not withdrawing the case. She has single-handedly fought India’s broken criminal prosecution system, brazen impunity and apathy. Now, she is also the target of a victim-blaming whisper campaign culture in her village.
“I begged for mercy but they didn’t spare me and threw my infant son and sister into flames,” the teenager said, showing her broken arm covered in a white plaster at King George’s Medical University (KGMU) in Lucknow as she limps through the hospital corridors to take a look at her son covered in white bandages with only a part of his face visible.
Unnao has been in turmoil since the sensational 2017 gang rape case of a 17-year-old and the death of her father in judicial custody that led to the conviction of former BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar. But this other gang rape case, which was languishing unattended for long, only drew attention after the mob attacked the family and threw the two infants into flames.
The rape survivor’s infant son suffered 35 per cent burn injuries and her sister 45 per cent, chief medical superintendent Sushil Srivastava said. The infants were first taken to Hallet Hospital in Kanpur from where they were referred to KGMU in Lucknow on Wednesday.
“The mob included two rape accused. They were unsure which one is the victim’s son so they threw both the infants in flames to erase the evidence of rape,” said the survivor’s lawyer Sanjeev Trivedi, who is bombarded with calls for TV channels to speak on the case.
A year-long battle
On 13 February 2022, the 13-year-old minor was on her way to buy sugar when she was picked up by some men on a motorcycle in Lal Kheda village. Her mouth was gagged while she was being hurried to a nearby graveyard where the men gang-raped her, the FIR reads.
As the parents searched for her, the minor reached home around 10.30 pm with her clothes torn in parts and her hair dishevelled. She ran to her mother, hugged her and narrated the entire incident.
She didn’t know at that time that a daunting struggle was ahead of her.
The men she identified were never named. The FIR was registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act against unknown men and a chargesheet was filed in May. The rape survivor alleged that there were five men who raped her but the police only arrested two men – Arun and Satish – and sent a minor to the correction home in March/April 2022. Even the medical check-up was done after several visits to the police station to plead and protest.
There was more to come. It wasn’t just an apathetic police, her own fellow villagers were against her, the family says.
On her return to the village from the police station, the girl and her parents were shamed, the family recalls. Elderly women, men and young boys would threaten the family to withdraw the case. The gang rape survivor was subjected to catcalling while her family was humiliated, the parents said.
The villagers hurled nasty comments maligning the girl’s character and accused her family of not doing enough to protect their daughter. It wasn’t the only time that her village turned on her. From that day till now, the girl has been repeatedly humiliated and her family has even been ostracised.
In this predominantly Dalit village with an Ambedkar image plastered on almost every door and wall, the minor has been left absolutely alone in her trauma.
“There are many girls in this village. Why weren’t they raped? Was she very beautiful? She and her mother are both characterless. She spoke to men and giggled with them,” said Chaseedha, in her 60s, stomping the stick she uses to graze the buffaloes forcefully to the ground.
“So, what do you expect would happen?” she asked as other men nodded their heads.
Another villager Nirmala pitches in as she makes cow dung cakes even as she adjusts her veil repeatedly.
“Either he will rape all or no one at all. This is to say that the girl was not raped, she is lying and even if she was, it’s her own fault because she would mingle with men. Now she is maligning men all over the village,” Nirmala says.
The villagers, meanwhile, have written to the police seeking “justice”, the family’s lawyer said. They have also alleged that journalists are writing “false narratives”.
With the villagers stacking up behind the two arrested men, the minor teen really had nowhere to turn.
“11-year-old gang rape survivor gives birth to baby in Unnao” were the headlines that followed in September. The newspapers mentioned the police preparation to move the court for permission to get DNA profiling of the newborn. After that, there was no coverage on the case.
The girl’s lawyer said that they have denied DNA profiling since there are five men involved in the case.
“The DNA will only match with one of the accused, freeing others. It’s a gang rape,” said advocate Trivedi.
The father of the rape survivor said that they had also gone to meet BJP MLA Anil Singh who asked them not to hype the case in the media and that he will help. But no help came along.
“I went to the office of the BJP MLA and pleaded for justice. I told him my daughter was gang raped and we were fighting for justice. MLA Singh asked me not to make much noise and that he will ensure justice,” the father said.
ThePrint reached out to Singh but there was no response.
‘Raped twice, pregnancy not told’
A week after the minor was gang raped in February 2022, she revealed to her mother that she was gang raped earlier in December 2021 as well. Her mother went to the police station but the family alleged that the police denied filing a separate FIR underlining that an FIR was already filed and they didn’t need another. The victim’s lawyer has accused police of taking advantage of the rape survivor and her family’s illiteracy.
The minor said that she was raped by the same men both times.
“I was called on the pretext of my father calling me. They took me to a house and gang raped me in December 2021,” the minor recounted, standing outside the ward, with her broken arm, where her son is struggling for life.
“I had fainted during the rape after which the men woke me up, gave me glucose and juice, and threatened to circulate my naked videos if I revealed anything to anyone,” the minor adds.
The first medical report of the test conducted on 15 February 2022 showed that the minor was six weeks and two days pregnant. ThePrint accessed the ultrasound that was conducted at Unnao district hospital. However, the family has alleged that the police and the doctor didn’t reveal the pregnancy to them.
“Had we known she was pregnant back then, we would have aborted the child,” said the 40-year-old father, a daily wage labourer, sitting under the shade of a tree outside KGMU hospital in Lucknow.
The police have denied the claim.
As the stomach of the minor began to swell, the parents took her to the same district hospital on 30 April 2022. The doctors told the mother that the minor had a pelvic inflammatory disease with dysfunctional bleeding because of which her stomach had swelled.
When the family later learnt about it, they rushed to meet advocate Trivedi with the help of a journalist who was covering their ordeal. The first thing Trivedi did was write an application to the court seeking proper medical check-up and delivery of the gang rape survivor.
Sankalp Dixit, a journalist with Jantantar TV in Unnao, had introduced the family to the lawyer. The minor was in her fifth month pregnancy when she was brought to the CWC office where Sankalp learnt about the gang rape of a Dalit minor girl.
“She was dazed and confused. She would cry periodically. She couldn’t understand what was happening. Her mother was giving statements on her behalf. The girl said that she was not helped by anyone. That’s when I told Sanjiv Trivedi about her,” Sankalp said.
The minor had also gone to the Child Welfare Committee in Unnao to get her statements recorded. When the accused were not arrested, the mother approached CWC Preeti Singh.
“She came to us first in February. She was already one and a half month pregnant. We told the family but I believe the family is uneducated and backward so they couldn’t understand. Then she came three months later, and her stomach was swelled. And she said no arrests have been made and I wrote to the police SP and police station asking why no arrests have been made till now. Then she came to me in September and the same day she got into the labour and the child was delivered,” Preeti Singh said.
On 22 September 2022, the girl gave birth to a boy at Hallet hospital in Lucknow.
“She didn’t know what to do. Her mother would remind her to breast-feed the child. She would forget and play with her siblings,” a journalist from Dainik Bhaskar said.
A teenage mother now, her travails were only going to intensify.
‘The rape accused got bail’
The whole case and the progress she had made with the police started to come undone. The fear and dread returned.
On 31 December, one of the alleged rape accused Satish got bail and that’s when things became difficult for the family, the father of the minor said. Under Indian law, an accused in a gang rape incident doesn’t get bail as easily after the 2012 Delhi gang rape case. A Maurawan police officer said Satish, 30, was not accused of rape but of conspiracy under Section 120B. Satish is married and has a daughter.
“The accused got bail but I don’t know why because I was transferred to this area a month ago. There must have been some grounds for the bail. He was accused in the rape. The victim had accused him,” said circle officer Santosh Kumar.
However, the rape survivor alleges that Satish was involved in both the gang rapes. Satish also worked as a labourer and his house is a few meters away from the rape survivor’s. For the villagers, Satish is an innocent man.
His wife Soni (28) says that her husband never raped anyone.
“The police are favouring the accused and finding ways to remove all of them from the case. The other accused had also made a plea in court that he was involved in conspiracy and should be set free,” said lawyer Trivedi.
When Satish was released on bail, villagers flocked to his house to celebrate. They hugged him, the elderly blessed him. For them, the bail established that Satish was innocent.
They congratulated him and shamed the teenage girl for accusing him. The girl saw the celebration from a distance standing at her door with the newborn in her arms.
“I want justice. In the last one year, my world has turned upside down. I don’t know how to respond,” the 14-year-old said.
What she didn’t know was that Satish’s bail would turn even more dangerous for her.
The father said the real ordeal started with villagers threatening them whenever they came out of the house and went anywhere.
“In the last one year, we have been threatened several times to withdraw the case and compromise. But we didn’t relent because of which we had to face humiliation and risks,” the father said. For him, the resolve to carry on this lonesome journey came from seeing her daughter lose her willingness to live day by day.
Advocate Trivedi recalls when the family had come to meet him at Unnao district court to discuss the case in the first week of February 2022. The discussion went on for long and the evening had set in. This is when the father told Trivedi that they are fearful of going back to the village as the men might kill them.
“I took them in confidence and asked them not to be afraid,” Trivedi said.
Later, at night when Trivedi called to check up on them, he learnt that they hadn’t gone back to the village home and were sleeping at the railway station. “Such was their fear of the villagers,” he said.
‘At the hospital’
On 13 April, when the family was returning from the court, the father said a few villagers intercepted them and asked where they were coming from. When he refused to respond, they started berating him and catcalling the minor girl and then attacked them. Most of the villagers are daily wage labourers and work in the fields so they have an axe at the house. The attackers included Roshan, Satish (rape accused), Shyam Bahadur, Chandan (minor’s grandfather), Raj Bahadur (minor’s uncle), Pancham, and Sukhdin. The grandfather and uncle had a long-standing dispute with the girl’s family over a piece of land. Police said Satish, Chandan, Raj Bahadur, and Sukhdin have been arrested.
The rapist took advantage of that and sided with the disgruntled members of the family.
The men attacked the father with an axe and threatened him to withdraw the case. While the father was admitted to the district hospital, the mob came to their house on the evening of 17 April, threatened the family, beat up the girl and her mother, and set their house on fire.
At the KGMU hospital in Lucknow, the father is wandering asking people to donate blood to save his child. He himself couldn’t donate because he was found to be underweight. Inside the trauma ward, the rape survivor with a broken arm and her mother with injuries in her body are limping in the corridors going from one department to another because the two infants have been kept separately.
“Our crime is that we fought for our daughter’s honour. Before the gang rape, everyone was happy with us,” the father said.
“Now that we have lost so much, I am not going to sit and withdraw the case.”
(Edited by Prashant)