The Girl Who Wasn’t Granted Dignity In Her Life And In Death

KAKALI DAS

[On 14 September 2020, a 19-year-old Dalit woman was allegedly gang-raped in Hathras district, Uttar Pradesh, India, by four upper caste men. She died two weeks later in a Delhi hospital.]

After the gruesome death of the 19-year-old who was raped and tortured in her village 15 days ago, her body was taken back from Delhi to her village and reached at about midnight (from various news reports). The police then asked the body to be cremated immediately.

There were very distressing visuals of family members flinging themselves physically at the ambulance to stop the police from taking the body directly to the cremation ground.

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The police were also seen in videos (that various journalists who were present at the time had made) arguing with the family and convincing them to burn the body immediately saying statements like “Aap logo ne bhi kuch galti kiye honge”, convincing them that it had been several hours since the death and hence, must be burnt without further delay.

The family members were seen begging, literally, that they be allowed to take their child back inside the house, to see her face for one last time. The family was begging not to cremate at night; the mother of the deceased wanted the young girl’s dead body to be brought back home as she said that it was her last wish which even wasn’t permitted.

This went on for two hours and in between half past 2 and 3 AM the police apparently, by the visuals online, allegedly barricaded the family inside their home, took the body directly to the crematorium and cremated it without the presence of any family members. We have a response from the District Magistrate from Hathras who has given a statement to the press and I quote, “The allegations of the funeral being conducted without the family’s consent are wrong. The father and the brother gave their consent to conduct the funeral at night. The family members were also present at the funeral, the vehicle carrying the victim’s body was present at the village from 12:45-2:30 AM.”

The Girl Who Wasn’t Granted Dignity In Her Life And In Death

Whereas, many journalists who were present at the time refutes these claims and said precisely that the family was not allowed to be present.

The brother of the young girl, according to an Indian Express report said, “It appears that my sister has been cremated; police aren’t telling us anything. We begged them to let us bring her inside the house one last time but they didn’t listen to us.” There are newspaper reports, again, alleging that the cremation was done using fuel and the pyre was lit by one of the policemen.

“I have been mulling over this and it seems that the district police and the state headquarters expected a very serious law and order issue if the body had remained and the cremation had taken place the next day or a day after. In view of their apprehensions that there will be a serious law and order problem not only because it’s a gender issue and an extreme form of torture and murder of a young child, but it also has caste connotations as well which can’t be just whisked away.

Therefore, it was not only the decision of the SP of the district but the magistrate also seems to have agreed to it. Yes, there should have been no cremation at night, family should have been permitted to honour the dead young girl, there shouldn’t have been any force against any of it. It’s an extremely insensitive, inhumane and professionally incorrect decision”, Meeran Borwankar, Former IPS officer said.

On being asked what would she have done if she was in the place of the police officer in-charge, if there was a concern about law and order in this particular case and how would she have handled it differently, Meeran Borwankar further said, “I don’t even have to speculate because when I was a young DCP in Mumbai we had a similar caste riot in Chembur and Nehru Nagar area. In the police firing four people lost their lives, one was a young 16-year-old girl belonging to a particular lower caste. The thought that we should forcibly have the cremation never occurred to us. In this I would say, may be Maharashtra police is more matured in handling such cases. These decisions are not taken at a young DCP or District Police Chief level, I am sure in Hathras also whatever the local police did it was with the consent of the State Police Headquarter which would be taking its orders directly from the Home Minister and Chief Minister since it’s not a routine decision. No young officer, whether it’s an IPS officer would take this decision on his/her own. I am 100 percent sure about this.”

“If we take the atrocities against Dalits, whenever there is a caste related death the Police officials tend to blame the law and order situation and they cowardly bury or cremate the dead bodies as happened in Rohith Vemula’s case too. They publicly announced that the body would be allowed for the students to pay the last rites but the body was secretly taken away to a different burial ground and it was cremated even without the knowledge of the mother. In this particular Hathras case if the police were truly concerned about the law and order scene and protecting women and maintaining peace and harmony in the State they would have definitely registered a case even before this offence happened since there is a past history between the accused family and the victim family”, Kiruba Munusamy, Caste Rights Lawyer, Supreme Court of India.

On being asked if she believes that the manner of conduct of the police officials in this case has a caste based angle to it (the manner in which the police have dealt with the family, which we have seen in the videos as if they are completely apathetic to the family, an ingrained behaviour that the police has towards people who are from Dalit community), Kiruba Munusamy further said, “Of course, it comes from the caste prejudice, caste hegemony that have been enriched in the police system as well. I have been on ground for many other cases as well and when there is caste related atrocities and deaths it is the Dalits who have suffered, right from seeking lawyer services, support from the police or whatever mediums one need in order to bring the perpetrators to justice.”

The UP police has treated this family’s rights, their customs, emotions with a certain level of disregard, while being unable to do their jobs again. It’s not even one’s inability to do their jobs, but the dereliction of one’s duty. For an instance, if we look at Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh (the rapist), when there were worries about how the Sirsa community would respond to him being charged as a rapist, the Police enforced the necessary measures for law and order to protect him.

Unfortunately, we only see that happening for the rape convicts and not the victims. By this the message that we are sending out is if someone is convicted of rape and there is an inch of indication that his followers may cause law and order issue, there will be enough ‘bundobast’ (arrangements) to ensure that it doesn’t occur.

But if you are a woman who has been raped and are from a family belonging to a Dalit community the system won’t grant you that dignity even in your death and cite absurd things like ‘law and order’ in order to subside the issue. There are sections of ‘offence’ and there is an ‘aggravated offence’; an act of abuse qualifies as aggravated when it’s done by someone who has been put in a position of power and responsibility to protect you.

When the police officers go and derelict their duties it is classified as an aggravated assault/offence. So everything we see as trying to make sense of this nonsense is not going to help. It’s a victim’s body, not an accused’s, so the State doesn’t have custody over the person’s body. Although she is involved in a police case her body is not the body of the state, it is her body. The legal guardian has the access to her body, which is her family and not the State.

So the state has no business taking her body in the middle of the night at 2:30 AM and setting it to fire. We are living in times where they will inflict your body with the worst kind of atrocity and they will say, “Oh! but we got permission, brother signed off on this”.

If this was the case, then why were all the police officers barricading the body and why are none of her family members involved in it. Hence, in the murder charge we shouldn’t just be charging the rape accused but also every police officer who neglected his duty, because the girl fought and survived for 14 days with the urge to survive. It was not the initial inflictions solely that caused her death, but the sequential negligence by the system.

None can make sense out of any of their bullshits (pardon my word) anymore. All we need is to focus on the complete betrayal, the breakage of law and order and demand for justice.

I don’t want us to get caught within their web of trying to confuse us with their excuses and justifications of this gruesome crime using the technical terms. I want us to focus on the fact that they have betrayed the humanity, the social contract and we can’t explain it in any other way.