In a little eatery somewhere in the South, a young man wields a ladle. He learnt how to cook during his stay in an observation home in Delhi.
He is the fifth person accused of being involved in the gangrape and brutalisation of 23-year-old Nirbhaya on December 2016. He was a juvenile then, and served time in a remand home for his crime.
Often portrayed, without any substantial evidence, as the “most brutal” face of that fateful night’s violence, he is said to be oblivious of the latest developments in the case, one which numbed an entire nation and brought people out on the streets to demand justice for the young girl who died 13 days after the tragedy.
“We had to send him far away from the national Capital so that people could not trace him and he could start a new life,” said an official of an NGO looking after the juvenile, adding that he was working as a cook somewhere on the southern coast. His employer does not know his actual name, and is not aware of his past. “We have been shifting him from one place to another so that he doesn’t come to anybody's notice,” the official, who did not wish to be named, said.
The official, who was present during the proceedings at the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) that tried the teenager, held the media responsible for projecting a bestial image of the juvenile without any basis.
“It is true that the juvenile has been found to be involved in the present case, but there is no evidence on record to show that he was the most brutal or that he had caused the maximum damage,” a JJB report had reportedly observed in 2013.
Enakshi Ganguly, who runs HAQ: Centre for Child Rights, which counsels juvenile offenders on the invitation of courts and JJB’s, said even the Investigating Officer in the case had recorded that there was no evidence to suggest that the convict was the most brutal and vicious in the assault.
The NGO official said he landed up by “mere chance” in the moving bus in which the woman was gangraped. “Actually he had worked for Ram Singh, one of the accused, and the latter owed him Rs 8,000. That fateful night he had gone there to collect his money and became a part of the crime,” he said.
Weighed down by poverty, the juvenile had come to Delhi from his village in Uttar Pradesh after fleeing home as a small boy.