Silence is Not An Option

Shiv Shankar

    But taking a stand requires deep reserves of courage. Manju and her father Dharampal, who used to work on the paddy fields owned by Rods, recall how when they went to the police to report both the gangrape and the murder, SI Ram Prakash at the nearby Butana Police Station refused to register their FIR. Prakash, also a Rod, allegedly threatened and insulted them because they were Dhanuks, a Dalit subcaste. It took pressure from NGO workers to ensure that the complaint was lodged at all and the accused arrested. Eventually, as is mandated by the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, Dharampal received compensation from the Deputy Commissioner of Karnal: Rs 60,000 for his daughter’s rape and Rs 3.75 lakh for the murder of his wife. The accused are currently under trial for rape in a specially constituted fast-track court. Since the Justice Verma Commission report, each district in Haryana is now supposed to try rape cases in these courts.

    The meagre financial compensation is scant comfort for Dharampal, who is no longer employed on fields owned by the dominant Rod community. He scratches out a living now from casual work at uncertain intervals.

    A job promised to him by the Deputy Commissioner has not materialised. Manju’s illnesses, her need to look after younger siblings and lack of money have forced her to drop out of school. Barring extended family, the Dalits in their village no longer speak to them, angered by Dharampal’s decision to name his neighbour, Kusum — a Dalit woman — as the third accused in the trial.

    It was Kusum, who the family say, taunted Manju’s mother about the rape. Kusum, they allege, colluded with Ajay and Krishen possibly for financial gain. Still, Manju remains determined to live life on her terms. She may have dropped out of school but continues to study commerce through tuitions.

    “Mujhe yahaan se nikalna hai (I have to get out of here),” she says, gesturing around the little galli where her house stands. After a year, her neighbours still avert their faces when asked about Manju’s rape.

    Statistically, violence against Dalits in Haryana, the country’s caste-ridden heartland in the imaginations of many, does not appear as rife as in many other states. According to the 2011 census, Haryana’s population was 2.5 crore and Dalits, a government report calculates, make up 19.35 percent of that population. It’s a significant slice, but according to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) figures, last year there were only 252 crimes reported against Scheduled Castes. It’s a rate of only 4.93 crimes per 1 lakh SC/ST people, compared to 29 in Bihar and a national rate of 16.71.

    “In Haryana,” says PL Punia, a Dalit leader of the Congress and chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, “incidents against Dalits may be fewer, but they are more brutal. The message from that one incident is intended to spread to the whole community.” But, he adds, somewhat cryptically, “Dalits are not that oppressed. They are getting an education. Administration is a little lax (in dealing with crimes against Dalits) but a proper investigation is always carried out against those who commit crimes.”

    The NCRB numbers suggest otherwise. If there are few reported crimes against Dalitsin Haryana, the conviction rate, at 7.9 percent, is abysmal, compared to the national rate of 23.9 percent. And at 50.31 crimes reported per 1 lakh people, the state has one of the worst records of crime against women.

    Between September to October last year, 21 rapes were reported in just 45 days. It is perhaps a sign of progress that so many cases were reported at all. Asha Kowtal, the general secretary of the All India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch (AIDMAM), a movement within the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, describes the rash of rapes as putting Haryana in “an embarrassing spotlight and forcing the police to work faster”. The efforts of such organisations to persuade reluctant girls, some of whom say nothing about their rapes for 10-15 days, to press charges and speak out about being raped deserves credit. It requires near constant vigilance to try and achieve a semblance of justice for Dalit women.

    Kowtal recalls the case of Ritu*, a 13-year-old girl from Panipat, who was raped by two Sardar Jats in November. She was abducted from a government hospital while visiting her mother. In a cruel irony, she was discovered lying bleeding on a dirty bed by AIDMAM members in that same hospital. The hospital staff ignored the girl, claims Kowtal. Despite protests from the activists, the two-finger test was conducted and the girl was reported to be sexually active. Hospital staff also tried to pressure the family to state that Ritu was mentally challenged, adds Kowtal. The family and AIDMAM also allege that CCTV footage showing Ritu’s abduction had been tampered with.

    It is incidents like these that catalysed AIDMAM to go on a 10-day karwan across 10 districts in Haryana. The march was led solely by Dalit women. “For the first time, I think, it was Dalit women at the forefront of such a movement,” says Kowtal.

    The women met rape survivors and senior police officers; they demonstrated outside the offices of the Deputy Commissioner of each district, even getting lathi-charged in Karnal. Organisations such as AIDMAM, AIDWA and the National Confederation of Dalit Organisations (NACDOR) are actively working to recruit young women and often men from Dalit communities to travel from village to village, reaching out to young girls who have been raped, their families, and the victims of various crimes and atrocities. Their goal is to spread education and an awareness among people of their rights, that they do not have to tolerate extreme violence as their birthright.

    One of the most troubling aspects of these efforts, various activists interviewed for this article said, has been the attitude of the police. Sridutt Sharma, the station house officer (SHO) of the Butana Police Station, told TEHELKA bluntly that “the Kalsi case” (Manju’s rape and her mother’s rape and murder) was the “only Dalit atrocity” in his jurisdiction. He maintained that the police did everything in their power to serve justice and that Dharampal and his family were being protected by two security guards. Throughout the time TEHELKA spent in Kalsi, with Dharampal and Manju, the guards were conspicuous only by their absence. Sharma went on to claim that in his six months as SHO, there had been no caste violence against Dalits. His jurisdiction extends to 56 villages. The claim, when put to lawyers and activists, was met with hoots of derision.

    One of the scoffers is Colin Gonsalves, Supreme Court lawyer and founder-director of the Human Rights Law Network. Gonsalves recently ruffled feathers at a gender rights conference in New Delhi by making the polemical argument that the only way to reform the police would be to sack over half the personnel. Gonsalves is handling several Haryana rape cases, including Manju’s, and frequently attends AIDMAM and NACDOR meetings.

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