The UP Govt’s affidavit in SC on the Hathras rape case, justifying its acts, shows why justice is a far cry for Dalits
The Supreme Court may express outrage at the gang-rape of a Dalit woman in Hathras as “shocking and extraordinary” and may have held the Uttar Pradesh Government to account over the legal protection of witnesses and the distraught family but does that change anything on the ground? On the contrary, the abhorrent arguments forwarded by the State Government in defence of what it did (though it was more like what it did not do) after the rape are the reasons why the justice system keeps failing us. By insuring the upper caste perpetrators, the UP police also ensured why two more gang-rapes of Dalit women that made the news, one in UP itself, in Balrampur, and the other in Ajmer, Rajasthan, were not followed up. Hathras may have become politically volatile but does that mean the other two women have been less violated? No. It’s just that the offence is so repetitive that it is not considered big enough. And given the fact that the UP Government presented its deficiencies as strengths, justified its obstructionist moves as necessary for maintaining law and order and pleaded that it was the victim instead of the tormentor, because there was a larger conspiracy to malign its image, even the unthinkable can be sold as credible. So justice seems like a far cry. What is disturbing is that the State Government keeps looking for all kinds of “otherisation” to justify its actions, labelling every problem as a conspiracy and a threat to national security and the greater good of the community. So it told the Supreme Court that its police had “immediately registered the crime” and that it had cremated the girl’s body in the presence of her parents to avoid a caste and communal flare-up that it had anticipated would be inevitable. Besides, some sections were force-feeding narratives to the victim’s family and sensing a larger conspiracy to defame the Yogi Adityanath Government, the blockade at Hathras was necessary to counter false propaganda. It forgot to mention that it stood guarantor and made exceptions for an upper caste congregation that was called to save the rapists. And if the official version that the girl was killed by strangulation and brutal assault is to be believed, then there was no rape at all in Hathras. Yet these claims not only seem abominable and distasteful, they are blatantly false. On-ground reports by media and independent investigations have revealed that the police filed the said FIR days after the incident. The forensic test that ought to have been conducted within three days was delayed to such an extent, by 11 days to be precise, that there was no evidence of sperm left in the victim’s body. Of course, the police knows that there are other ways of establishing rape, like matching DNA samples from the victim and the accused. But that was not to be as her body was burnt. As for parental consent, the family has been consistent in its statements that members were isolated in their house, stopped from accessing any kind of outside help. Not only that, once the State Government felt that things were slipping out of its control, it imposed Section 144, barricading the entire village and alienating the victim’s family, restricting media presence and heckling Opposition leaders who were trying to meet the family. The UP police filed 21 FIRs across the State, alleging sedition and conspiracy by “unknown” people. One of the FIRs also alleges that the family of the young woman was offered Rs 50 lakh to lie about the State Government. This is one of the six that were filed based on a complaint, predictably, by a sub-inspector. Did the State Government realise that there are other ways of hatching conspiracies than milking the rape of a daughter? Worse, the State Government’s affidavit also accused the media of criminal intent to incite riots. In contrast, nowhere did it show a semblance of empathy for the girl who lost her life, accusing the family of changing versions of their statements as proof of a frame-up.
This is exactly a throwback to the gang-rape of Bhanwari Devi in 1992. Her rapists were acquitted in 1995 on the grounds that upper caste men would not even touch a lower caste woman as it would defile their “purity.” Nothing has changed since then. If we go by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) figures for 2019, then about 10 Dalit women are raped every day in the country with UP recording among the highest numbers. And given the tone and tenor of the State Government’s affidavit in the highest court of the land, and, therefore, seen as a measure of the official response mechanism, that number is likely to be higher. Most Dalit women do not report the crimes for fear of backlash by the dominant castes, coercion by the tools of the State that they happen to control and out of a fatalistic acceptance of their birth as a burden to be borne and lived with. Even among the rare cases that are prosecuted, the outcome is rarely empowering or so dragged out that the traumatised victim just gives up. Little wonder then that over the past five years, crimes against Dalits have almost doubled. Hardly are the procedural clauses mentioned in the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, followed strictly. This law mandates that violations be investigated by an officer who is or above the rank of DSP and that a chargesheet be filed within 60 days. The conviction rate for rape is anyway low in the country, at about 28 per cent. So imagine the chances of a Dalit victim. At this rate, even our moral conscience will look like a threat some day.