Unnao, Kathua rape cases: Involvement of majoritarian interests have shown the State’s complicity in these horrors. By Sharanya Gopinathan
A strange alchemy of time, politics,
placement and accident makes some photos just iconic. Like Nick Ut’s 1972 photo
of the ‘Napalm girl’, The Terror of War, which became the face of
the horrors of the already unpopular Vietnam War, or The Kiss, a
1945 photo taken in Times Square by Alfred
Eisenstaedt, of a drunk naval soldier kissing a dental nurse, which quickly
turned into the icon of celebration of America’s victory over Japan in World
War 2. Many years later, the woman in the photo, Greta Zimmer Friedman,
expressly said that the spontaneous kiss was not, in fact, consensual.
Here is the photo
that'll describe the horrible times we’ve brought upon ourselves and are
trapped in right now. Indian scholars of the future will pick apart every pixel
of this frame, decoding the import lurking in every corner, the menacing weight
of both those smiles, the sombre face of the Ganesha, the saffron and green
sign board behind them, everything.
It is a picture of
Kuldeep Singh Sengar, a BJP MLA from Unnao accused of raping a minor
Dalit girl. Here he stands as he reaches the office of UP chief minister
Ajay Singh Bisht (Yogi Adityanath) on Monday. Significantly, he’s flanked by a
beaming, indulgent guard on one side, a solemn, imposing Ganesha statue on the
right.
Image courtesy: @ANI/Twitterwitter
Along with her family,
the teenaged girl who accused Sengar of rape attempted suicide on 9 April outside Adityanath's office (the
same office where Sengar stands grinning in arrogant joy). Her father was
immediately arrested after the suicide attempt, and allegedly beaten so
severely that he died in police custody. His post-mortem report reads that he
had multiple abrasions near the abdomen, buttocks, thighs, above and below the
knee joints and arms, and ultimately died of blood poisoning due to colon
perforation.
On Wednesday night, Sengar drove to the house of Lucknow’s police chief with 100 of his supporters in tow. The media had been reporting that Sengar would surrender that night. Sengar turned up and said that the only reason he had come out here was to prove that he was not in fact a fugitive and did not intend to surrender. He was not arrested, and at the time of writing, still hasn’t been. So really, is there a better time to be a rapist of minorities in India?
On Wednesday night, Sengar drove to the house of Lucknow’s police chief with 100 of his supporters in tow. The media had been reporting that Sengar would surrender that night. Sengar turned up and said that the only reason he had come out here was to prove that he was not in fact a fugitive and did not intend to surrender. He was not arrested, and at the time of writing, still hasn’t been. So really, is there a better time to be a rapist of minorities in India?
Last weekend also saw
reports of the breathtakingly horrifying rape and murder of 8-year-old Asifa
Bano from Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua in a case so brutal it’s really difficult
to get down to the details. Asifa was kidnapped, drugged, held captive in a
temple, brutally raped several times and violently murdered — with
police involvement — way back in January. A member of the nomadic
Muslim Bakerwal-Gujjar tribe, Asifa’s rape and murder was likely part of an
extensively planned attempt by a group of locals, including a retired
government official, his son and juvenile nephew, to force this tribe out of
the area. One of the men even temporarily halted the disposal of her tiny,
8-year-old body just so that he could rape her one more time.
The case finally blew
up mainstream media headlines last weekend and caught the nation’s attention
after we saw photographs of lawyers from Kathua attempting to stop police from
filing a full chargesheet against those involved in the case, which include two
police officers who were paid off to help cover it up. The police were physically
barred from entering the court complex on Tuesday by violent lawyers from
Kathua chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and other slogans. The lawyers are being
bolstered by members of the Hindu Ekta Manch, a right-wing party with links to
the BJP, and have been holding protests in support of the rapists for over a
month now. These protests have been attended by two sitting BJP ministers — the Minister
for Forest Chowdhary Lal Singh, and Minister for Commerce and Industries
Chander Prakash Ganga.
The similarities
between these two events are harrowing. In both cases, the victims were members
of minority groups: The Unnao survivor a Dalit, the Kathua victim a nomadic
Muslim. In the latter case, it was her identity that singled her out as a
target. In the former, this identity is being used to malign her words and the
credibility of her family. In both cases,
powerful Hindu men are being shielded by other powerful Hindu men. In the Unnao case,
Adityanath did not deign to meet the rape survivor or her family, and yet the
alleged rapist Sengar has his direct ear, given the speed with which he was
granted an audience with the chief minister, and the joy the prospect of that
conference brought to his face. As of Thursday morning, the Uttar Pradesh DGP
has said that Sengar has been booked but will not be arrested until the
allegations are proven against him, which is pretty much the opposite of how
cases are supposed to work — the police should arrest an accused and bring him
to court to prove the survivor’s allegations, not the other way around. The DGP
has also called Sengar “honourable” while insisting that no one was trying to
protect him.
Meanwhile, in Kathua,
two police officers reportedly helped wash away blood and traces of DNA from
the 8-year-old victim’s clothing. They failed completely at doing this
successfully and getting away with it, but it is the thought that counts. Which leaves the rest
of wondering what we can even think right now. Looking at the painful
facts of these cases, it’s hard not to see them as anything but instances of
the state’s complicity in crimes committed with impunity, thanks to armed
guards on one side and the power of religion on the other. There is, in fact, no
other way in which these events could have played out like this: The complicity
of the State and its security forces, and the powerfully polarising force of
religion, were both integral components of these terrible events.
So where are we now?
Sengar continues to roam around scot-free. Sitting ministers of the ruling
party have been demanding that rapists not be arrested, the police are calling
alleged rapists and suicide-inciters honourable, the rape of an 8-year-old
Muslim girl is already being linked to “cow-slaughter”, the police have washed
blood evidence away from the clothes of a child’s corpse, and all our social
media feeds are currently afire with before-and-after pictures of the face and
corpse of Asifa. Juxtaposing the photos
of baby Asifa and the grinning Sengar neatly and painfully encapsulates every
sorrowful, confused, miserable, hopeless and dazed feeling the rest of us could
have about these times we’re stuck in. But if you are a certain kind of Hindu
man living in 2018, with god and State by your side, I guess you can't help but
laugh maniacally.
