Ayodhya: Seated on a chair in their one-storey house in Sohawal tehsil in UP’s Ayodhya district, the mother of the 20-year-old Dalit woman feels all is lost. Family members have “stopped stepping out,” and her youngest daughter was harassed on her way back from school. A return to normal does not even seem like a distant possibility, at least for now.
The woman’s eldest daughter was allegedly raped multiple times by her boyfriend and his acquaintances between 16 and 25 August including at a guest house and a garage where she was also kept in confinement. Five people have been arrested on her complaint, including her boyfriend, who is the main accused—a local BJP leader’s son known to her for more than four years. Ayodhya Police have booked him as a juvenile.
“I used to trust him a lot. He established physical relations with me several times on the pretext of marriage,” the complainant, a college student who is also employed by a contractor to work as a sanitation worker at the Ram temple, told ThePrint.
In addition to the family’s claims that the police “refused” to admit the woman’s complaint at first, and that the main accused is not a juvenile, questions are also being raised about charges invoked against the accused. Only three of the total nine accused face charges of gangrape, while three others have been booked for sexual harassment.
Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Shailendra Singh, currently posted as Circle Officer (Ayodhya City), told ThePrint the main accused “was in a relationship with the victim but later betrayed her”. He added that the “juvenile offender” was arrested on 4 September along with co-accused Shariq and Shiva—both booked “under the section equivalent to 376D (gangrape)”. Singh also said that one accused surrendered in court on 13 September and that three others, including two who are unidentified, are yet to be arrested.
Asked why the main accused was being treated as a juvenile which means that he would get a maximum of no more than three years of imprisonment if found guilty, Singh said the police relied on the Class 5 marksheet of the local BJP leader’s son.
What FIR says, charge of ‘blackmail’
According to the FIR lodged in the case at the Ayodhya Cantt police station on 2 September, a copy of which is with ThePrint, police invoked sections 70(1) (gangrape), 75 (sexual harassment) and 127 (2) (wrongful confinement) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) against the accused.
Citing what the complainant told the police, the FIR states that the main accused and his friend Shariq (a co-accused in the case), offered to drive her from the district hospital again on 10 August but she refused.
The complainant alleged that her next encounter with the main accused was on 14 August when she accompanied him to a bakery for the birthday of a co-accused. “There too they were trying to pressure me to take me to some hotel but I left and headed home.”
The FIR goes on to state that on 16 August, the main accused along with co-accused Vinay and Shariq took her to a guest house in Angoori Bagh on the pretext of an outing and allegedly took turns raping her. Around 7 pm that same day, she was taken to a garage in Banbirpur where the main accused allegedly raped her again. Shariq and the main accused then left, leaving her at the garage with Vinay.
It was while she was at the garage that another accused, Shiva, misbehaved with her “under influence”. However, in her remarks to the media on 12 September, the complainant alleged that Shiva forced unnatural sex on her.
In the FIR, she also alleged she was kept in confinement at the garage till 11 am on 18 August when the accused dropped her off at the Devkali Bypass.
Four days later, on 22 August, Vinay and the main accused went to see the complainant and later took her to a hotel in Mumtaj Nagar, but did not stay there for long since the hotel demanded that they furnish their Aadhaar cards.
The woman further alleged that Vinay and the main accused kept her with them on the nights of 22, 23 and 24 August and dropped her off somewhere during the day. She alleged that Vinay and the main accused raped her again at the garage in Banbirpur on the nights of 22 and 23 August and that she was alone at the garage on the night of 24 August.
Around 4 am on the morning of 25 August, the main accused and five others came to the garage and misbehaved with her on the pretext of driving her to the Ram Janmabhoomi, which is when the car they were travelling in collided with a divider at Mahobara Chauraha.
Stating that she suffered injuries to her head and foot, the complainant said the accused dropped her off at an intersection soon after the accident. This version of events as stated in the FIR too differs from what the complainant told the media, alleging that the accident took place when those in the car were trying to force her to perform unnatural sex.
Speaking to reporters on 12 September, she alleged that friends of the main accused would call her and that she had asked him to stop them. She also said she had a fight with the main accused after the guest house incident. “He did not stop his friends even once … he himself took me there due to which I had a fight with him near Gudri Bazar. He did not stop his friends even once and when I tried to run away, he held on to my hand very tightly.”
On the alleged guest house incident of 16 August, she told the media, “Five of them raped me at Gokul guest house in Angoori Bagh that day. This was the main accused, Shariq, Vinay, Ajay Yadav and one more person who could have been Shariq’s brother.”
“Shariq said I belong to a lower caste and asked why I was resisting them so much? They beat me and raped me. The hotel owner Ajay Yadav was also there and so was Shariq’s brother. All of them took turns raping me. I just want action against them,” she said.
Adding, “They videographed the incident and kept blackmailing me due to the fear of which, I could not reveal my ordeal to anyone.”
‘FIR lodged after we approached senior officers’
The complainant is the eldest of three daughters. Her father is a sanitation worker at the office of the assistant municipal commissioner and her mother a daily-wage labourer who works in the fields most days. While the eldest daughter started working even before she completed her college due to financial constraints, the younger one is preparing for SSC examinations and the youngest is a Class 8 student.
Despite their best efforts, the youngest daughter too could not escape the shadow of this case. Just as she resumed school, “a group of youngsters started to pass comments on her and would laugh among themselves when they would see her walking back from school”.
“She came back crying some days back and we had to inform the police,” her mother said. The police had to step in and rebuke those at fault.
The younger daughter, preparing for competitive examinations, said the case disturbed her studies. “I have stopped venturing out. My father resumed work just three days ago,” she told ThePrint.
Further, the mother alleged the police initially refused to acknowledge their complaint. “When we went to the women’s police station on 31 August, the women cops refused to take our complaint at first. They asked why we had come 15 days after the incident. The FIR was lodged only when we approached senior officers,” she told ThePrint.
Asked about the family’s claim, SSP (Ayodhya) Raj Karan Nayyar said, “I heard that when she went to the mahila thana, the accused pressured her to resolve the matter and discouraged her from approaching the police. But as soon as I got to know of the incident, the police swung into action.”
Further, the complainant’s mother also alleged that family members of the main accused faked his real age to ensure he is booked as a juvenile.
“He (the main accused) was known to my daughter for the past four years. They met when she was studying in Class 12. When she is 20-years-old, how can he be 16.5? His father is in the BJP which is why no BJP leader came to our doorstep. Leaders of all other parties have reached and offered help but none from the BJP,” said the mother.
Photos available until earlier on his Facebook profile show the father of the main accused attending meetings of the Ayodhya BJP unit. There were also photos of him with BJP leaders including former Ayodhya MP Lallu Singh and former MLA Ved Prakash Gupta, which have since been deleted.
Asked about concerns that links father of the main accused has to the ruling BJP may influence the investigation, BJP’s Ayodhya city president Kamlesh Srivastava said, “Since I joined mahanagar team of Ayodhya, there has been no mandal president by that name.”
With the ruling BJP and its arch-rival the Samajwadi Party gearing up for the high stakes Milkipur bypoll, the Ayodhya case has become fodder for the Akhilesh Yadav-led party to attack the ruling dispensation. This can also be seen as a counter to UP CM Yogi Adityanath’s remarks last month that the SP is a part of “rioters” and “predators”. The chief minister made the remarks in reference to the arrest of a 65-year-old SP worker, Moeed Khan, and his helper for allegedly gang-raping a 12-year-old girl.
“CM came here, harped on Moeed Khan, but did not even mention the case of our daughter who works at the Ram temple because the son of a leader from his own party is an accused in the case … I want to ask if this is justice, irrespective of the caste or religion of the accused,” Parasnath Yadav, SP’s Ayodhya district president, told ThePrint Friday after Awadhesh Prasad, the party’s Ayodhya MP, addressed a public meeting in Milkipur.
Scoffing at the police’s decision to book the main accused as a juvenile, former Samajwadi Party MLA Tejnarayan Pandey alleged the police conducted a ‘weak’ investigation and invoked ‘lighter’ sections against the accused under the BJP’s influence.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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