Balrampur: She was a dreamer, and the only girl in her village to have a laptop, an award from her school for academic excellence.
Driven by her ambition to become a lawyer, earn well and help her family pay off their debt, the Balrampur native was preparing for the CLAT (Common Law Admission Test), which oversees admissions to national law universities, when her dreams came crashing down on 29 September.
On that day, she was allegedly abducted and gang-raped by two people, including a juvenile, and thrashed. When she arrived home that evening, accompanied by two teenagers, she was in a “semi-conscious state”, her family says. She was in pain, they add, and all she could do was muster the strength to tell her family that she wouldn’t survive.
She didn’t.
The woman died hours later, while her family was taking her to hospital. Her post-mortem report, accessed by ThePrint, suggests she was thrashed. It states that the ante-mortem injuries she sustained led to her death, and identifies shock and haemorrhage as the immediate cause.
While it revealed a ruptured hymen, the autopsy report doesn’t mention vaginal injuries. However, the doctor who conducted the autopsy told ThePrint that sexual assault can’t be ruled out yet.
Police claim the adult suspect has denied the allegations against them, abduction, rape, and murder. Shahid (23) is believed to have told police that he knew the woman and she had voluntarily come to meet him at his house on 29 September. While there, he is learnt to have said, she got ill.
Police in Uttar Pradesh say they are investigating the case, and trying to piece together what exactly happened.
Meanwhile, her family is left picking up the pieces after the death of their young daughter.
“Koi gareeb ki ladki padh ke aage nahi badh sakti. Woh kuch karti, usse pehle he uski jaan khatam kardi (a poor man’s daughter can never study and become successful. Before she could do anything, she was killed),” the woman’s mother said, speaking to ThePrint at the family’s thatched home in village Majhauli.
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Worked with an NGO
According to the 22-year-old woman’s family, she worked with an NGO where her role involved educating farmers on ways to make their produce better by selecting the right inputs like seeds and soil.
She earned around Rs 3,000 from this job, most of which she saved for buying her books, the family said. Her mother added that she chipped in with whatever she could, even borrowed money, to let her daughter chase her dreams.
“She often told me that, once she becomes a lawyer, all our miseries would end,” the mother added.
“She went for meetings with her NGO colleagues, travelled to villages to educate farmers. She was very active and ambitious. Only if she was from a well-to-do family, this would have not happened to her,” she said.
‘Papa, I will not survive’
On the morning of the crime, her family told ThePrint, the victim left home to seek admission in a BA course at a local private institute. She said she would return by noon, her mother said, but did not, and became untraceable.
Around 6 pm, she returned home on a cycle-rickshaw, the family said. In a semi-conscious state, she was held on each side by two teenagers.
“She was sitting on the floor of the rickshaw. Her hair was all over the place, she could not even sit straight and two boys were holding her from both sides. I ran towards her and asked what happened, but she could not respond,” said the mother.
“Her eyes were shutting, her clothes were all wet and there was a cannula on her hand,” she added.
Cannula is a tube inserted into a patient’s hand by healthcare staff to inject or extract fluids from the body.
“Her father went and picked her up in his arms as she could not stand. He took her inside. All she said was ‘papa, main nahin bachungi (papa, I won’t survive)’,” the mother said. “We could not understand what was happening, who put that cannula,” she added.
The woman then started complaining of a burning sensation in her stomach, and told her mother she was in pain.
“We decided to take her to the doctor. The doctor told us that her condition was deteriorating and we should take her to a bigger hospital. We were on our way when she breathed her last in my arms,” the woman’s father, who works as a labourer, said.
The cannula and the two accused
When the woman returned home, her grandfather said, he asked the rickshaw-puller where he got her from. The rickshaw-puller said she was sitting by the road at the market and was “falling unconscious”, the grandfather told ThePrint.
“I immediately went to that market and asked around if someone had seen anyone dropping her there. I was told that one doctor, Zia-Ur-Rehman, was called for by two men to treat a woman who had fallen unconscious,” he said.
“I immediately went and checked with the doctor, who told me that two men had called him to their house to treat her,” the grandfather added. But the doctor claimed to have refused to treat the woman as “he thought it was a suspicious case”, he said. “He even informed some people around,” he said.
The grandfather claimed he then went to the house where she was allegedly kept but found it locked. He subsequently approached police and filed a complaint.
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Investigation and arrest
Based on the family’s complaint, police lodged an FIR for alleged abduction, murder and gang rape. They arrested Shahid and apprehended a 16-year-old juvenile for their alleged involvement in the case.
Local police told ThePrint that, in his statement, Shahid claimed he and the victim had been in touch for three years. He told police that she started feeling unwell when she came to his house on 29 September.
“He said that she complained of stomachache and asked him to call for a doctor. He then called doctor Zia-Ur-Rehman, who refused to treat her,” a senior police officer said.
“He subsequently called one of his friends, who works as an assistant to a local doctor, who then gave her an injection and some medicine. That is how that cannula was there on her hand,” the officer said.
Police have now called the doctor’s assistant for questioning and also detained the rickshaw-puller, the officer added. “This rickshaw-puller who dropped the woman home often transported raw material for Shahid’s shop,” the officer said.
‘Unsure of rape angle’
The post-mortem report of the woman does not mention vaginal injuries, so police personnel say they are still unsure if it was a case of gang rape, as alleged by the woman’s family. Police will speak to the doctors concerned to reach a conclusion.
What, however, is still unclear is how the woman sustained the 10 injuries — on her chest, thighs, and breast, among other parts — found in the autopsy.
Sources in police said the Balrampur woman appeared to have been hit on the side of her chest, which led to a contusion, internal bleeding and haemorrhage.
Around 2.5 litres of blood — or around half the amount an adult human’s body has on average — was found collected in her stomach cavity, which may have led to her death. The finding about the blood was also mentioned in the autopsy report.
“From the injuries, it appears that she was thrashed multiple times. It is also possible that she tried to resist a rape bid, because of which she was thrashed, a second police officer said. “It is also a possibility that the injection or medicine that was given to her reacted in her body, leading to death,” a second police officer said.
“We are examining the report and are also consulting experts to understand what may have happened,” the officer added. “Meanwhile the two accused have been arrested.”
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Initiate the incident proceedings through a fast court and hang those found guilty of the heinous crime without delay. Enough is enough.