When the alleged Kunduli gangrape news was carried by sensation-seeking media, insensible politicians imagined it was time to make best hay. The girl had alleged that four security force men in typical camouflage dress forced the act on her in daylight, naming the COBRA (Commando Battalion for Resolute Action) people, a specialised unit of the CRPF, proficient in guerrilla tactics only to counter Maoist insurgency. Needless to say, BJP leaders kept mum because the CRPF is a Central outfit. But Congress strategists took up the issue to capitalise on the issue. The Odisha police investigated the matter without any bias to malign the Central Government. The preliminary report revealed there was truly no sign of rape. The forensic lab did a marvellous job by even completing the DNA tests of the stains on the girl’s undergarments. There was no reason for the State forensic experts to bungle the medical reports. The police could have squarely focused on the COBRA outfit and make merry by having the CRPF maligned. It did not do it because the intentions were absolutely noble.
A neutral fact-finding team with highly-trained experts had visited all the linked locations and talked to every related character to come up with the following findings:
The girl could never come up with any coherently-focussed accusation; she only kept mumbling about Central force men, hissing softly about the term ‘Cobra’.
She conclusively appeared mentally disturbed, nay deranged, and spoke with confusion and without conviction.
There was an element of falsehood, perhaps prompted into her head by somebody to get away from the truth as if to escape counter-accusation or walking into very big danger.
The forensic lab technicians did the job at record speed including the DNA of the fluid stains on her own underpants. Multiple tests conclusively pointed to her own fluid from the private part.
They also tested for semen from all the stain marks. Semen presence is confirmed by a ‘prostate-specific antigen’ (PSA) test and the acid phosphatase (AP) test from all human vaginal stain and fluid samples. The tests have all shown conclusively ‘negative’ for semen.
Semen presence is tested by three methods: sperm detection by ‘light microscopy’, the ‘AP enzymatic reaction’ and the ‘presence of PSA by using an immuno-chromatographic rapid kit’. The efficiencies of the AP and PSA tests were compared using the light microscopy result for the presence of sperm as the gold standard. Every test conclusively showed no signs of semen. Only vaginal fluid of the girl was detected in all the tests.
How then, they talk of the first report showing semen detection and the later one showing negativeIJ The answer is simple and must be trusted. The initial tests are all offhand done on a thumb rule basis. Semen detection is first suspected if a specific colour shows up: light brown or pink. But that does not confirm semen as it occurs in the vaginal fluid with other contaminant compounds as well. So, they cross–confirm with the final acid phosphate and some other final tests to get the detection fully established. It must be noted that the forensic technicians much in excitement and mad frenzy, due to raging media and political storm all around, placed both the report sheets to the higher authorities in the police and may be the judiciary. The ‘first thumb rule report’ and the ‘final conclusive report’ were both handed over though the method is go on discarding the first trials until the final ‘indisputable finding’ is in hand. No wonder, the second hell broke out when the forensic lab confusion and blunder fell in the hands of politicians and media reporters. Not surprisingly, the BJP stage players with the shrillest voices, lying in hiding until now, sprang to feet and joined the blaming bandwagon crying out ‘foul’. The public focus by now had shifted from the ‘Central serpent forces’ to set on the State authorities under a State Government headed by a magical chief executive with laurels in lap to leave detractors in incurable mental ailment.
More than the technical aspects, the Kunduli victim story has more frightening facts to share: the little innocent girl from a backward Christian community had actually gone mindless after having been infatuated to a distantly-related same age boy. She was madly keen that the boy marries her. But the boy, also a kid himself, kept off out of fear of shame, and whenever in touch, told her to refrain from such unacceptable demands. She would not listen. As time rolled by, she became a mental wreck out of frustration and, on occasions, hurt herself fatally before the helpless boy. On the eventful day, not night, they came across each other at a vantage rendezvous; and both got into the act of being intimate physically like hugging passionately and maybe a little more, but nothing more. Around this time, people passing by got to notice them in a socially-undesirable position and raised alarm. Thus began the planted story to save face of all. The girl’s family decided to hush up the matter at first, but some fertile brain convinced them, particularly the brothers, that if an allegation is made believably, a huge amount of money by way of compensation for rape would be made available. The whole group of people agreed to this seemingly-brilliant idea. The real victim, actually a forced ‘lover boy’, also was too willing to cooperate. The whole drama was scripted thus; and everybody played each one’s role as perfectly as possible. They tutored the girl to name the jungle-dress security people, fumbling about the ‘COBRA name’. The CRPF authorities bluntly denied any of their troops having been deployed there around that time and trashed the allegations. The State police had to come on the scene and the rest is history already.
The most painful fact being suppressed by the family members and the opposition party members, mainly the BJP now, is that the top medical experts had found her mentally ill due to pressure exerted by the family and the political parties to keep telling a blatant lie. She was so distressed that she said severally she could take it no more and tried to end life a couple of times. Medical experts referred her strongly to psychiatric treatment and counselling. But the family members, under the influence of crooked politicians and mad mediapersons, insisted that she be taken home instead of being put in the care of a psychiatrist who could have counselled her to positive thinking. Much against recorded and publicly-witnessed advice of doctors at the SCB Medical College, her family members were obstinate about taking her away with an ‘undertaking of responsibility’ for any untoward outcome due to the girl’s shifting from Cuttack or lack of psychiatric intervention. Thorough investigation indicates that the family also had become frightened after the girl attempted to end life once primarily because she could not take the pressure of being tutored to keep telling lies about the imagined rape act. Besides, her boyfriend was being pushed farther and farther away. So, on record, the family had taken her away from quality medical care, of their own accord, much against expert medical advice. A thorough investigation by a human rights probe team too found no evidence of any rape, let alone gangrape. The girl is no more. The family has to be nabbed for having coaxed and provoked the little girl to take the wrong course only because they believed millions of rupees from the public exchequer could be grabbed by a lie if presented dramatically.
After the saddest death of the innocent, mentally ill little, BJP women leaders staged such indecent shows of protest as no civilised society would ever forgive. Congress leaders too joined them in holding up the dead body for days and the funeral rites had to be performed late. The poor family cooperated as they were told that one hundred million rupees would come by way of compensation. BJP women forgot the COBRA battalion due to silly state forensic guys’ blunders and imagined political advantage would be attained by showcasing the dead body as a commodity.
Now that a judicial inquiry and subsequently a Crime Branch probe into the forensic bungling have been ordered, the truth shall emerge much sooner than believed. Many uneducated creatures, who have offended a whole State and a poor family in particular, may then have to look for holes in vain to hide their blackened faces.
(The writer is a core member of Transparency International, Odisha)