Rape victims recall horror of the ‘cowardly’ act

Rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua has shattered the entire country. Her pains and screams have deafened the state government but aroused the sentiments across. But there are several rape incidents and atrocities against girls which go unheard. Jaykishan Sharma hit upon two such incidents which shatter the humanity and pose a big question on civilised society:  

Two stories, two girls but fate is the same. Names of the victims are changed to protect their identity while the two rape survivors share their horrifying ordeals with DNA and Human Rights Watch

Five Men V/s Sameena

Sameena, a 25-year-old  woman from a village in Bharatpur district, went to the police station with her husband and his family members on March 14, 2016, to register a complaint of gang rape a couple of hours after the incident. Sameena told Human Rights Watch (a NGO) that she had gone to defecate in the jungle along with her sister-in-law. She had her six-month-old son with her. Five men from the village accosted them. Her sister-in-law managed to escape but the men held Sameena’s baby hostage and threatened to kill him if she attempted to sound an alarm.

Sameena and her family complained that the police failed to lodge an FIR. Only after Sameena’s family approached the superintendent of police did the police file an FIR on March 25, 11 days later, for gang rape.  

Subsequently, the family wrote letters of complaint in July 2016 to several senior police officials, the state’s home minister and the State Human Rights Commission that they were facing threats and demands to withdraw the case from the accused, and appealed that the investigation be carried out by a senior police official or another officer. In October 2016, the police filed a charge-sheet against the five accused for assaulting a woman with intent to outrage her modesty and for sexual harassment, but ruled out rape. The police said that it had examined a video clip recovered from the mobile phone of one of the accused, which proved that the men had harassed Sameena and her sister-in-law, and even threatened Sameena’s child, but did not show rape. The charge-sheet also quoted the medico-legal report by the doctor to say that Sameena did not have any injuries on her body and “was habituated to intercourse.”

Two men got better of Niharika:

On January 27, 2016, 17-year-old Niharika, a student in a village in Bharatpur district, went to the jungle to defecate. She alleged that she was raped by two men from the village, who then video recorded her while she was naked. The men threatened to share the video on social networking sites if she told anyone about the rape. Terrified, Sarita initially complied, but after a few days told her mother, and the family went to file a police complaint on February 13. Her father told Human Rights Watch that the police refused to file an FIR that day. The next day, the police asked him to pay 300 rupees to register the FIR. Her father said he had only Rs 200  which he paid. After he said he would complain to senior officers, the police filed the FIR on February 14. In September 2016, Sarita reported threats from the accused to the police. She said that one of the accused, after being released on bail in September, came with his uncle to her house and threatened to “destroy her life,” abduct her brother, and kill her family members if she did not retract her statement.The accused and his relatives sat outside Sarita’s house with sticks and other weapons.Sarita sought protection from the police.Her father said that the police warned the accused from approaching Sarita and her family and since then, things had improved.