Sri Ganganagar: The ride to Vijaynagar and back home was supposed to be a routine one. But, that was not to be for the 13-year-old gangrape survivor.
Now, back at her home in Sri Ganganagar and recuperating from the horror she endured, the teenager recalled how she had come in contact with Gurjeet—an 18-year-old mechanic who kept pursuing her with his overtures and coaxed her to visit him at Vijaynagar, a little over 100 km from Sri Ganganagar by road.
Initially, the two had exchanged glances when Gurjeet worked as a car mechanic in an area near the Rajasthan State Industrial Development & Investment Corporation (RIICO) regional office in Sri Ganganagar.
That had led to a follow request on Instagram from Gurjeet, she recalls. “We started texting each other and occasionally he would show me his car repair shop in Vijaynagar, coaxing me to meet him,” she said.
She finally decided to meet Gurjeet on 18 June. “I often go to meet male and female friends. This too was no different.”
In Vijaynagar, Gurjeet took her on a motorcycle ride as he had some other plan. “He drove me to a secluded area and started forcing himself on me despite my refusal. He continuously told me that he wanted to marry me,” she recalled.
Later, Gurjeet dropped her off at a bus stop from where the teenager took a bus to Sri Ganganagar. As she got down the bus at her home town, she had no inkling of the horrors that awaited after hopping on an autorickshaw to home.
First, she was abducted, drugged and then held captive in a hotel. For four days, the police said, she was raped by more than two dozen ‘clients’, hotel managers and staff in Joy Inn, Hotel Dream and Hotel Sapphire.
The police have arrested 21 individuals, including Gurjeet, and are on the lookout for several others. The accused have been booked under relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO), and Juvenile Justice Act.
‘Felt like my life was passing’
When the teenager got down at Sri Ganganagar, she was restless to be home. “I kept thinking that I needed to be home before my mother came back from home, but it was already 8 pm and I knew I was in trouble,” she said.
A shared ride on auto is the usual option for commuting fast, and she decided to avail one. Soon, an auto driver, identified as Rambabu, approached her, was ready to drop her to her destination without any extra fare.
“Initially it was all fine, then he told me that he had to pick up something from a hotel and it would only take him a couple of minutes,” she said. Restless, she asked him to hurry.
Minutes later, her vision became blurry and she could no longer move, the teenager recalled.
Staring at a drawing on her room’s wall, she told ThePrint that the next few days were all blurry. “It felt like my own life was passing in front of my eyes and I was watching it,” she recalled.
The ordeal lasted four days. “People did things to me while I lay immobile. A lot of men came. Sometimes, I was taken to a different hotel, while other times, they left me locked up in a room with a cleaning staff to look over me,” she said, as her eyes kept fixated on her twitching fingers.
The autodriver, the police confirmed, is among those arrested.
Denial & disbelief
On 22 June, when the police rescued her from Joy Inn, she could only recall frantically looking for her mother. “I was in a crop top, jeans and makeup. They had taken away all my clothes and my mother could hardly recognise me,” she said.
That was when she pulled out her mother’s dupatta to prove that she was the daughter missing for four days.
“I was in disbelief. Her face was swollen, there were marks on her body, she was constantly complaining about pain in her body. Whose clothes was she even wearing? That was not my daughter!” he mother said, recalling the episode at the local police station.
That night, both the daughter and the mother kept questioning themselves, if all that happened was their fault.
“I asked myself repetitively that if I had not gone to meet Gurjeet would this have happened? I am certain that he is part of this nexus. Yeh sab usi ne karwaya hai (he has a role in everything that has happened),” the minor said with firmness.
Her mother recalled that she too questioned her choices. “I kept thinking that would all this have happened if we had not left our village in Haryana and came here for work? She would have grown up around her grandparents and cousins. If i would not have taken a job, she would have had me,” she said, choking on her words.
Hurt, not broken
In the past few days, the teenage survivor has nurtured her bodily wounds, while unsure about the impact the ordeal has on her psyche.
“She does not speak much about what she has been feeling, apart from time to time she keeps telling me that her chest is paining, or hips are paining. At night, sometimes she will twitch because of severe vaginal pain,” the mother said, wiping her tears.
On the face of it, the 13-year-old told ThePrint that she “no longer likes mulling over these things”. “I am just waiting to go back to school. They have asked us to come after eight days since they are short on staff.”
Smiling at her daughter’s wish to join back school, the mother chimes in to say that she is worried thinking how the society will treat her now. “I fear that the world here will treat her differently, her friends’ might play with her but will their parents allow it? What awaits my daughter’s future?”
Not to be perturbed by her mother’s concern, the teenager eagerly scrolled through reels on her mother’s phone. In a reassuring tone, she smiled and spoke to her worried mother. “One day, I will become a police officer.”
(Edited by Tony Rai)