A fortnight after the barbaric gang rape of one of their women, the Dalits of Lahbouli village in Hardwar district stand by the audacious verdict of their biradari (community)—"Women who bring shame upon the community deserve to be shamed". A perverted sense of justice which saw the Dalit community consent to 11 men raping a 26-year-old married woman for eloping with a Muslim man.
A crowd of about 60-odd Dalit men allegedly stood outside the victim's small mud hut on the fateful night of July 13, while the community's 11 self-styled dispensers of justice mercilessly tortured and raped her. The brash woman, they reckoned, deserved the revolting 'punishment' for leaving her family and running away to Punjab with a Muslim youth to return home pregnant after about four months.
"One by one they dishonoured me. Then, with hardly any clothes on my body, they dragged me out to the courtyard and hung me by my hands to the neem tree. 'Let this be a lesson for women whose bodies demand so much from men of other castes and religions,' they yelled. I was beaten and abused. They then pulled me by my hair and took me into the hut where I was again raped till the early hours of the morning," the victim whispers, cringing in pain in a dreary ward of the Roorkee Government Hospital. She is inconsolable, even as attending doctor Urmilla Vohra assures her that her pregnancy has survived the assault and her husband Amresh pats her supportively.
Calmer, she gazes at her bandaged bruises and weakly mumbles that her hoarse appeals for help that night hadn't melted the resolve of the biradari who had tied up her husband and mother-in-law. "They were all there. But no one, just no one, came forward to help. Not a single voice rose in protest," she recalls, her tiny frame shivering. The hapless mother of three remembers hearing her young petrified children crying in the hutment's only other room through that horrendous night. "Till I blacked out totally. To have water sprinkled on me and be raped again," she says, shutting her eyes tightly as if to block out the ugly images that will haunt her for the rest of her life.
But for the Dalit residents of Lahbouli, the 'lesson' taught that night is to be remembered so that the community's dignity remains intact. Remorseless, they say they are willing to support the families of the rapists who are now in Roorkee jail. "They have ensured that no Dalit woman will dare spoil her record now. Also, men of other communities like Islam (the rape victim's lover), won't have the gumption to enter this village again," justifies Shamalo, son of Chan-der who has been arrested with four others for 'abetment in rape' by participating in the biradari panchayat held the day after the crime was committed. The state police is on the lookout for the five other vociferous participants at the panchayat meeting.
The panchayat had been held outside the house of Om Pal, who has also been arrested, and had sought a final apology from Amresh for letting his wife "wander characterlessly" with a Muslim man. Even whispering a word about the night's deeds to the police would cost the victimised family social boycott, the biradari had warned. As a Dalit youth Rajbeer righteously observes: "The elders had dealt with a problem in the way they saw fit. Each community has the right to make its own laws."
A warped belief that had the Lahbouli Dalits scornfully shun intervention by residents of other castes in the village as they decided how to deal with "a woman of loose morals". The Gram Pradhan, Mohammed Shafiq, regrets not having been more forceful in his attempts to make the community see sense. Not having realised how explosive the situation would become, says Shafiq, he had thought "undue interference" might lead to furthering the animosity between the Muslim and Harijan communities in the village. "My intention had been to avoid worsening the situation. I never imagined things would take such a gruesome turn," the guilt-ridden pradhan says. "As it is, they were so furious about their woman running away with one of our boys."
Islam is still on the run. His father, 55-year-old Mohammed Gaffur, a farm labourer in the neighbouring village of Lakh-nauta, hopes his son will not return too soon. "The strange way their justice works, the Harijans might want to lynch Islam. Then our people will take up cudgels to protect him. It could lead to bloodshed between the communities," the old man fears. "Best that my son keeps away."
Amresh's family may be forced to do the same. A crowd of taunting neighbours thronging her hut, the victim's mother-in-law Artari Devi says she finds it difficult to cope with life in Lahbouli ever since her son took his battered wife for treatment. Not letting her young grandchildren out of sight even momentarily, she fears the irate villagers might harm them to get even with her son. "They are so angry with us for bringing the police into a community affair. The barbs, the ostracisation is unbearable," she laments. And adds apologetically that they would never have approached the police sticking to the biradari's instructions, but for the fact that her bahu would have died without medical aid. "And she was in such bad shape that the hospital refused to admit her without an FIR," she says.
At the hospital, patiently nursing his wife, Amresh's voice acquires a nervous tone when he talks about the future. Certain that the biradari will never forgive him for subjecting it to police scrutiny, he feels his family may have to move out of the village. But flashes of uncontrollable anger often replace anxious apprehensions: "Who were they to punish her when I had forgiven her? They made me grovel for forgiveness in the panchayat after they had raped my wife. And now we have to make a humiliated exit when it's they who have committed a heinous crime. It's disgusting."
Thana Manglaur's incharge and investigating officer for the case, Mahesh Chander, is more shocked that it took five days for the police to get a whiff of the incident—an indication of the biradari 's clout.
And the Lahbouli Dalit biradari, it seems, remains poised to persecute. Intolerant and insular, they await the arrival of those who haven't learnt to 'respect' the community. Even if it implies 'respecting' rape.
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