Shamli, Uttar Pradesh: When 36-year-old Asmat (name changed to protect identity) found out Tuesday that the men who had raped her a decade back had been convicted, she said she did wuzu (ablution), offered Namaz and hugged her children.
“I am very happy that I have got justice from Khuda [God],” she told ThePrint.
Asmat was raped by three men on 8 September 2013, during the Jat-Muslim communal violence that swept through western Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar district, leaving at least 60 people dead, around 100 injured and many families displaced.
On 9 May a trial court in UP held two of the men guilty of the crime and handed them 20 years imprisonment. The case against the third accused was abated in 2020 after he passed away during the trial.
According to the judgment in Asmat’s case, accessed by ThePrint, on the date of the assault, Asmat was fleeing her village, Lank (in Shamli, Muzaffarnagar) with her family, after they heard of riots breaking out. While running, Asmat, who was carrying her then three-month-old child in her arms, got separated from the rest of her family.
She went to a nearby sugarcane fields to hide. However, the child’s crying, alerted the three men— identified in the judgment as Kuldeep, Maheshveer and Sikandar — to her presence there.
The judgment adds that Kuldeep was armed with a gun and Sikandar had a knife with him. While Kuldeep snatched her son away, Sikandar held a knife to the child’s throat. The three men then raped her, with each taking turn to hold the knife to her son’s throat.
“My son was in danger so I didn’t scream,” Asmat had said in her police complaint, which is part of the judgment.
Through the years, Asmat said she continued to fight the legal battle, braving threats and demands to settle the case. She recalled facing ostracisation, and had to uproot her family from Shamli, and move to Delhi for a few years to ensure the security of her family.
As her case crawled through the criminal justice system, with prolonged delays and multiple judges being transferred towards the end of the trial, Asmat said, her husband remained her biggest support.
On what kept her going through the last decade, she said, “I continued the fight so that looking at me, other women may also find the strength to fight such battles…I don’t want anybody else to go through what I did.”
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‘He loves me a lot’
According to Asmat’s police complaint, the men had warned her against telling anyone about the rape.
“I was in a lot of pain after the rape, but I wasn’t telling it to anybody… Then I met my husband after the riots [a few days after the incident], and he hugged me and asked me what happened. That is when I told him,” she told ThePrint.
Once the family reached the refugee camp in Malakpur village in Uttar Pradesh, she heard similar tales of rape and devastation from other women. “This gave me strength,” she told ThePrint.
In October 2013, she sent a complaint to the Fugana police station in Muzaffarnagar through post, recounting her ordeal.
“I sent a letter because I was very scared of that place, I couldn’t imagine myself going there again… But they [the police] weren’t even filing our FIR, there was nobody to listen to us… When I sent the complaint, I did not get any response. I was very dejected,” Asmat told ThePrint.
According to court documents, an FIR in the case was registered only in February 2014, after Asmat, along with other victims of gang rape during the communal violence approached the Supreme Court.
In 2014, the Uttar Pradesh government announced a compensation of Rs. 5 lakh to the seven women who had alleged rape during the riots. This money helped Asmat and her husband to buy a home in a village in Shamli.
“But we had to build everything from scratch when we moved to Shamli, we had nothing left… My mother, who is a daily wage laborer, had saved up and gifted me many things, everything was gone,” she said, looking around her bedroom.
“Through all of this, my husband remained my biggest strength, he has supported me a lot. He still counsels me a lot, he loves me a lot,” she said.
Reacting to the judgment and recalling their struggles with the case, Asmat’s husband, who works as a tailor, told ThePrint, “She had to go record her statements, it went on for at least eight-nine months. We struggled a lot…Other women settled the case, but we were warned by Vrinda Grover [senior advocate, who represented Asmat in the case] ma’am that they would try to break us…So we kept at it.”
“And so we fought and got justice,” he added.
‘Threatened to kill my children’
The filing of the case was only the beginning of Asmat’s ordeal.
“They [the convicts?] used to turn up at our [Shamli] home, sometimes with other people…They’d threaten to kill my children, to kill me…They also tried to settle the matter with money,” Asmat told ThePrint.
She added that Grover and her team had warned her that fighting the case wouldn’t be easy, but she was ready for it.
Asmat has three sons — a 13 year old, a 10 year old and a six year old. The eldest son’s education suffered the most during the last decade, she said.
The boy is studying in the fifth grade right now, when he should’ve been in the eighth grade right, Asmat told ThePrint. The 10-year-old is in the fourth grade and the six-year-old is in second grade.
“I am very upset about the fact that my children’s future also got impacted by this… The time that I’ve lost will never come back.”
The chargesheets in the case were filed in 2014, and charges were framed against Kuldeep, Sikandra and Maheshveer four years later in December 2018. The men, who had been arrested in 2014-15, were charged under section 376 D (gangrape), 376 (2) (G) (gangrape during riots) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The trial against Kuldeep stood abated in 2020 after he passed away that year.
However, Asmat had to approach the Supreme Court once again in February this year, pleading for day-to-day hearing of her case. This was after the judge in her case was transferred at least thrice during the final arguments which began only in January 2022, she said.
When a judge is transferred during the final arguments, the new judge has to hear arguments from both sides all over again.
Her plea before the apex court, seen by ThePrint, alleged “an inordinate and excessive delay” in the case.
On 13 March 2023, the Supreme Court asserted that this scenario “troubles us” and asked the trial court to take up the matter on priority, taking up the case on a day-to-day basis as much as possible.
The judgment in the case was finally reserved on 26 April this year. The sentence was announced Tuesday.
Oggy and the Cockroaches
Talking to ThePrint in her Shamli home, Asmat said in the past decade, her physical and mental health had also suffered. She says that in the colony where stays currently, families would often ostracize her.
“They wouldn’t let their children near me. They’d tell each other, she has been raped. It made me so angry… Did I do it on purpose, for my happiness?” she asked.
The family moved to Delhi for a few years in 2016, she told ThePrint, after the threats and ostracisation continued to haunt them. They have since moved back to Shamli.
In Delhi, Asmat found her way back to education. She said she was now learning how to read and write in English and Hindi.
“I’ve learned to read, I can chat now on the phone too. I can sign my own name. I am doing it for my kids.”
She also found friends in the new city. “The woman who used to come to teach our children in Delhi became my friend, and she also taught me… I can watch videos on Youtube.”
“We watch videos on studying usually. I’m learning numbers too, I’m not good at maths yet, but I’m learning.”
She added: “I also watch cartoons sometimes with my sons… We like Oggy and the Cockroaches. Now I just want to focus on my children, just want to be their mother and be there for them.”
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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