Piyasree Dasgupta - Decoding Modi govt's defence of rape accused minister Nihalchand
"Narendra Modi is a good person. He shouldn't have
ministers like Nihalchand Meghwal with him." The statement comes across as
neither an accusation nor a fervent plea. It's made by the woman at the centre
of a new BJP versus Congress tug-of-war. A maroon
dupatta loosely wrapped
around her head, the woman who has accused chemicals and fertilizers
minister Nihalchand Meghwal of rape, speaks with quiet defiance - her low,
unwavering voice a strange mix of wariness and resilience. "He [Meghwal] is coming to my village and telling the
village elders that he will give me money and a government job," she tells
the TV journalist. "Ask her to take my name off the case, he is saying. Agar
innocent hote, yeh sab nahin karte." [If he was innocent, he wouldn't
do all this.]
Nihalchand Meghwal, a Rajasthan MP, had been named in an FIR
way back in 2011, along with 17 others. In it, he was accused
of drugging her and letting 16 other men rape his wife while she was
drugged. The incident took place in Jaipur. After a year, the Jaipur
police closed the case, accused the complainant of fabricating
the charges against the men. The police also requested the Jaipur
court where the case was being heard to close the case. The woman has appealed
repeatedly and the case resurfaced in public discourse recently when a
Jaipur court decided that her plea deserved consideration. It has asked
Meghwal and the other accused to explain to the court why the
case should not be re-opened.
When the alleged victim says that Modi shouldn't work with
Nihalchand, she is only stating convention. Traditionally, political
parties have distanced themselves from members who are going through scandalous
situations such as this one. While the police may have dismissed the charges, clearly
the court has found some merit in her plea. In such a scenario, the government
should ideally have let law take its course.
However, this government, it seems, doesn't need the
legal system to settle such matters. Defence Minister Arun Jaitley has allegedly
issued an advisory to BJP leaders asking them to back the minister of state
unconditionally. CNN IBN reports that Home Minister Rajnath
Singh, who was employed by the Prime Minister to examine the case, is satisfied
with Meghwal's explanation. BJP spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi too jumped
Meghwal's defence saying, "You can't falsely implicate someone. Nothing
has been proven yet."
Lekhi, in her defence of Meghwal, epitomizes the primary
problem with getting justice for rape victims in India . Although she says
"nothing has been proven yet", she seems to have already reached the
conclusion that Meghwal is being "falsely implicated", which means
the complainant is to be blamed. Lekhi reminds us of the thumb rule by
which most cases of sexual assault are investigated in India : placing
the burden of proof upon the one who has been raped even though the law is clear
that the accused have to prove their innocence. This social attitude combined
with the imbalance of power between the aam aadmi and
the powerful, political class creates a situation in which
Meghwal stands protected and secure while the complainant must contend with
disrespect and disbelief.
According to available reports, the woman who has been
fighting this had repeatedly complained of how shoddily the initial
investigation into the case was conducted. She also accused the police of being
swayed by political influence. It is not too difficult to believe her.
There are way too many precedents that suggest the Indian police is
anything but immune to the arm-twisting done by the powerful.
Take for example the case of law student Priyadarshini
Mattoo, who was raped and murdered in 1996. The accused was the son of an
influential police officer in Delhi .
It took ten years for the case to reach the point of sentencing. In between, in
1999, he was even acquitted by a trial court, based on the evidence provided by
the investigators in the case. Eventually, in 2006, he was found guilty and
sentenced to death. Jessica Lal was shot and killed in front of several
witnesses in 1999. The accused Manu Sharma, the son of a Haryana minister, was
sentenced to life in 2006, seven years after Lal was murdered. He too was
acquitted in between. Most recently, a police officer in Badaun was dismissed
after it came to light that he had refused to lodge a complaint followed the
twin rape-murder, because the accused were high caste, rich jats.
Meghwal and the other accused have not yet responded to
the court's demand for an explanation. Meanwhile, the
government has already formed a huddle to protect its minister.
There are no official statements and the fact that Meghwal remains in office is
a de facto show of support for the politician from his party. Statements by
people like Lekhi, dismissed the charges, further establish the
party's decision to stand by their man. In the BJP court, Meghwal has
been proven innocent. Much like how the accused in the Muzaffarnagar riots were
felicitated by the BJP because the party was convinced they had no role to
play, actions in Meghwal's case speak louder than words.
The complainant in Meghwal's case has an uphill task ahead
of her. There's no medical test that can be relied upon. Even when the rape
trial is based on circumstantial and physical evidence, it subjects
victims to a plethora of questions. All she has, essentially, are her claims of
what happened and these will be pitted agains the claims that the
police and lower courts have made about her accusations.
Accusing someone of rape is fraught with danger in India ,
regardless of the demographic to which the complainant belongs. In Uttar
Pradesh, a girl was burnt alive in broad daylight because she dared
to identify her rapist. In another incident, a rape victim's mother was
thrashed by the accused's family for lodging a complaint. With reports like
this coming in regularly, you'd think that the newly-formed government would
take this opportunity to make a statement. Instead, it has chosen to mirror the
practice of victim blaming by letting Meghwal continue in his ministerial
position and issuing a gag order to others in the cabinet.
For all the campaigns that assured the Indian electorate
that this government wouldn't make the mistakes of the previous
Congress-led government, there's no clearly difference between the two in some
aspects. Congress MP PJ Kurien has been implicated in the ongoing
Suryanelli
rape case. However, the Congress displayed complete faith in him
and he was even allowed to continue as the deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha.
The Opposition then, too, didn't find it necessary to bring the issue up.
Perhaps the most dangerous side effect of this scramble to
look after one's political herd is that it reaffirms the belief that if one has
the right connections, they can get away with any crime. At a time when the
world is looking at how India
negotiates its dismal record of violence against women, it does nothing for the
national reputation to have a man accused of facilitating rape -- of his own
wife, no less -- in the government. Media gags are all very well to keep the
facts out of circulation, but the way the party has handled this case shows
a worrying legitimisation of victim-blaming.
Even if Meghwal is actually blameless, the government's stand on the Meghwal case lends a sense of righteousness to the existent social mechanisms of intimidating, silencing victims. It also displays an alarming contempt and lack of respect for the judicial process. The message this sends out to
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