According to India’s National Crime Records Bureau, four Dalit women are raped, two murdered and two Dalit homes torched on an average every day. All for upper caste to prove their dominance. The recent spurt in rapes in Uttar Pradesh reiterates how vulnerable women, especially Dalits, are. BISWAJEET BANERJEE travels to the Katra Saadatgunj village in Badaun to bring you a report
The non-descript Katra Saadatgunj village in Badaun is one of the back-of-the beyond villages in central Uttar Pradesh untouched by modernity. The kuchcha road is dotted with mud huts and thatched roofs. This village would probably have never made a name for itself had it not been for the bodies of two cousins which were found hanging from a mango tree on May 27, 2014. The incident not only brought village into limelight, but also brought to fore the plight of women in Uttar Pradesh.
“They were not only cousins, but good friends who used to go everywhere together. On the fateful evening, too, they had gone to the toilet in the nearby fields, a routine for our womenfolk. When they got late we did not realise something might have gone wrong. The next day morning, we saw their bodies hanging from the tree,” Jeeval lal, father of one of the girls, said.
It’s a month from the incident and the Central Bureau of Investigation has taken charge of the investigation but wails can still be heard from the ramshackle mud house. “The women in our family can’t stop crying. The way our daughters were hung from the tree will haunt us forever. On top of that, the local police are siding with the rapists. Hence, the CBI probe. How can we have faith in the police which is trying to protect the killers. We have got threats from influential villagers. We have been told that once the media and cops go, we too will be killed. We can’t stay in this village any more. Today, due to Government apathy, we have to per force move to from the house that belonged to our forefathers,” lal says.
The family also questions DGP Al Banerjee who claimed that girls were not raped and that the murders could be part of honour killing. “If the head of police says that family members have killed the girls and the post-mortem examination has not confirmed rape, everyone knows what the thanedaar will say and do. The earlier post-mortem report had confirmed rape. The DGP’s statement is part of a big cover up to save the killers who belong to Yadav community,” lal says.
The killings have exposed the caste faultlines in this region where Yadavs dominate the political spectrum. The village is part of Badaun district, a high profile constituency represented by Mulayam Singh Yadav’s nephew Dharmendra Yadav. It is one of the four constituencies in Uttar Pradesh won by the Yadav family in the lok Sabha elections held in April-May this year. The girls hailed from the Shakya community, the most backward caste, members of which work as labourers in the fields of Yadavs and Thakurs of the region.
The caste equation, coupled with the cold-blooded murders, has become a recipe for political parties to dish out sops for publicity. leaders of all political hues have visited the family offering monetary help. BSP chief Mayawati gave a cheque of Rs 5 lakh and former Chief Minister Kalyan Singh of the same amount but the family has refused any kind of financial assistance, saying they want justice not money from Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.
“Hamari chidiya ud gayee … use maar daalaa” wails Ram Kali, the girls’ grandmother. Vimla, the victims’ aunt, tries to console old woman but tears don’t stop. “She cries all the time. She has passport size pictures of the two girls and shows them to everyone who comes here. Even though the picture has faded, it is my mother’s most precious thing now,” Vimla says. The photograph was taken last year when the family had applied for BPl card. “This is the only picture of the two girls together that we have,” she tells you.
Meanwhile, the Badaun rape case has led to a spurt in reportage of sexual assaults all across the State. In the last three weeks, over 100 rape and murder cases have been reported. The body of a 15-year-old girl was found hanging from Dadu village in Aligarh, the body of another girl was found in Rae Bareli while, in Sultanpura, a mentally challenged girl was gangraped. Sexual assaults have also been reported from Mainpuri, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar and Rampur.
“Post-Badaun, the new trend is to not just rape but murder the victims too and then hang them from trees. It is as if these criminals are mocking the law. Since all this happens at night, police action happens only in the morning. This reflects the state of law and order in Uttar Pradesh. The criminals are not afraid of the police because the ruling party is giving them a patronage,” BJP spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak says.
The figures confirm this suggestion. last year, 23,569 incidents of crime against women took place. The State Government records say that 10 rapes are committed every day in UP. This does not account for unreported incidents which, if taken in consideration, will substantially jack up the figure. Other crimes include 7,910 kidnapping and abductions, 8,440 complaints and cases against cops, 6,202 incidents of crime against SCs and 5,676 riot incidents.
Just two-and-a-half-years back, people voted the Samajwadi Party to power with the hope that a young foreign-educated Akhilesh Yadav would turn the tide in Uttar Pradesh. The party got a thumping majority. It won 224 seats in a 403-member Vidhan Sabha in 2012. Akhilesh pledged to make Uttar Pradesh a crime-free State (Uttam Pradesh).
Instead, the first year of his rule witnessed 23 communal riots and the second year was rocked by the Muzaffarnagar riot which killed 69 people and rendered over 50,000 homeless. The Government’s apathy came to light when children were dying of cold in the make-shift tarpuline tents in Shamli where the temperature plummeted to minus 4° Celsius and the Ministers were enjoying a dance programme of Bollywood stars. A group of Ministers, led by Mohammad Azam Khan, in-charge of Muzaffarnagar, also went for a five-nation foreign tour.
The recent incidents have exposed Yadav’s administrative non-capability. In political circles, it is believed that the young CM lacks the political wisdom needed to rule a State like Uttar Pradesh. He appears to be a disinterested politician more suited for a 10 am to 5 pm job. He is pushed and cajoled by his father Mulayam Singh Yadav to perform. In one of the Press conferences, Mulayam even said that had he been Chief Minister he would have improved law and order within 15 days. In another public admonition of his son, Mulayam said: “Mukhya mantri suniyee meri baat. logon se miliye. Chaar (logon) se milte hai aur kuch maalum nahi kya ho raha hai. (Chief Minister listen to me. Start meeting people. You have a small coterie who don’t know what is happening around).”
People close to Akhilesh say that the Chief Minister is not given a free hand to run the State. His Council of Ministers are people whom he used to call chacha. Some senior Ministers don’t give respect due to a Chief Minister, in this case Akhilesh. In such a scenario, he can’t delegate work and therefore, the work suffers.
“look at Akhilesh’s predicament. He does not have secretaries of his choice. His secretaries report to Mulayam directly. Senior ministers like Azam Khan, Ambika Chaudhary and Ahmad Hasan prefer to take directions from Mulayam. Many a times, Akhilesh has asked Shivpal Singh Yadav to improve the state of roads and his chacha has ignored him because he is doesn’t want to take directives from him,” a senior leader explains.
So, while the State machinery looks the other way, the lower castes in the State continue to face the brunt of what some term as caste culture turning into rape culture. According to the latest National Human Rights Commission Report on Prevention of Atrocities against Scheduled Castes, every 18 minutes, a crime is committed against a Dalit. Every day, three Dalit women are raped, two are murdered and two Dalit houses burnt down, and 11 Dalits beaten black and blue. Every week, 13 Dalits are murdered, five home or possessions burnt and six kidnapped. This rate doubles when it comes to Dalit women. Hence, it is not surprising that in a State like UP, where Yadavs and Thakurs rule, the plight of the lower castes is only getting worse.
The Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Its Causes And Consequences by Rashida Manjoo says that violence against women in India is systematic. It is underpinned by the persistence of patriarchal social norms and inter and intra-gender hierarchies. Women are discriminated against and subordinated not only on the basis of sex, but on other grounds, such as caste, class, ability, sexual orientation, tradition and other realities. That exposes many to a continuum of violence throughout the life cycle, commonly referred to as existing “from the womb to the tomb”. The manifestation of violence against women is a reflection of the structural and institutional inequality that is a reality for most women in India.
The report also says that Dalit and Adivasi women and women from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes are frequent victims of multiple and intersecting discrimination, as well as violence.
Caste-based discrimination, which also includes intra-caste hierarchies, continues to be pervasive and widespread. The intergenerational nature of caste-based discrimination condemns women to a life of exclusion, marginalisation and disadvantage in every sphere of life.
Toilet rapes on the rise
Women in almost all the villages in the country go and relieve themselves in the fields. They move in groups to avoid harassment and lewd remarks by the men folk. The recent rape and killing of two girls in UP, where 77% villagers defecate in the open, has brought to light that due to lack of toilets, women become easy targets for such crime.
The two cousins who were gangraped and killed while they had gone out in the fields to relieve themselves, highlights how vulnerable women in the country are to sexual abuse because they do not have toilets in the security of their homes.
“There is a link between rape and not having toilets at home. Over 60 per cent of the rapes in Uttar Pradesh occur when the victims are out in the fields because they do not have in-door toilets,” IGP Ashish Gupta says.
“Rapes are not new in UP as every day 10 are reported as per the National Crime Record Bureau statistics. It is difficult to give protection to every woman who goes out to relieve herself,” Gupta tells you.
The Badaun case in not new. Such incidents are reported from other parts of the country as well. In April this year, four women, two in their teens, were raped in Haryana. They were Dalits and the culprits were Jats. These women, too, had gone to the field to relieve themselves when they were attacked and raped.
Around 48 per cent of India’s population doesn’t have access to sanitation and 65 per cent villagers defecate in the open, a WHO report says.
Sulabh International, an NGO that has constructed cost-effective toilet systems in slums and dense urban localities, claims that of the over 24 crore houses in the rural belt, only 11 crore have toilets. And, of 7,935 cities, only 160 have sewage treatment plants. In Uttar Pradesh, 77 per cent villagers defecate in open.
Sulabh International founder Bindeshwar Pathak tells you that any woman defecating in the open is vulnerable. “The Government must acknowledge the issue. Resources will only pour in then,” Pathak who has expressed his desire to work with the Modi Government to ensure toilets in all homes, says. “I am going to write to the Prime Minister soon,” he adds.
After the rape incident, Sulabh has taken up the initiative to construct toilets in 108 houses in Katra village of Badaun district. The debate on the link between toilet and rape was initiated earlier by former Union Rural Development Minister Jai Ram Ramesh. In 2012, he had questioned the development priorities of UP when the 2011 census revealed that India had more mobile phones than toilets.
last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had advocated home toilets when his remark “toilet first, temple later” sparked off a debate.
In UP, the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) was launched in collaboration with the Centre in 2002. The entire project now stinks as much as the field toilets. TSC was told that 82.5 per cent households have toilets but the data collected in the 2011 census shows that just 22 per cent households have washrooms.
“This data clearly proves that public money has been flushed away in the name of toilets. Initial reports suggest that 42,186 toilets were constructed only on papers,” Alok Ranjan, a senior State level officer, says.
Political gaffe
The law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh has been worsening since the Samajwadi Party took charge a little over two years back. With the recent spurt of rapes in the State, the perception has strengthened that the Government is a failure when it comes to protecting the lives and dignity of women because the political leadership does not have the will to do so.
The whimsical statements by senior Samajwadi Party leaders have exposed the party. While the country is still reeling under the shock of the twin gangrape of the Badaun cousins and their subsequent murder (the post-mortem examination has suggested that girls were alive when they were hung from a mango tree), the party’s national general secretary Prof Ram Gopal Yadav, Mulayam’s cousin, blamed the increase in crime against women to “vulgarity, obscenity and violence shown on television channels.”
When SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav was asked about the increase in violence against women, he said: “You do your work and let us do our work.” The statements came on a day when United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon had said that he was appalled by the Badaun incident and urged all to say no to the dismissive and destructive attitude of defending culprits by saying that “boys will be boys”.
When Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav was asked about his reaction of Badaun case, he questioned a woman reporter: “Are you not safe in Uttar PradeshIJ”