A 19-year-old woman lies on a cot in the sparse living room of the single-storey house; a dotted blue sheet shrouds her from head to toe, and the only signs of life are the occasional shaking and shivering of the person underneath.
It is a horrific sight.
It is the first sight that greets you, as you walk into the home of the 19-year-old Rewari rape survivor, escorted by a soft-spoken local policeman who has been deputed by the court to provide protection to the woman and her family. He tells me that a second policeman relieves him of his duty every 12 hours – “Abhi aata hi hoga” (He’s on his way).
The protection seems apparent when you walk into the near-bare living room and notice the silence, palpable and heavy; three members of the woman’s family (her father, her mother and her younger brother) sit on a cot adjacent to the young woman and quietly watch her sleep.
“Beech-beech mein soti hai, phir thodi der ke liye jagti hai (She’s been drifting in and out of sleep),” says her mother, as she sits on a bed in an inner room diagonally opposite to her daughter’s cot, so she can keep glancing over. “She would keep mumbling in the hospital how she wanted to come back home. It had been two weeks.”
All Three Key Accused Were From the Same Village
At 7.10 am on a Wednesday morning, 12 September, a car arrived abruptly at the spot where the 19-year-old woman had hopped off the bus that she rode daily to reach her coaching centre in Kanina. She was pushed into the car as part of a meticulously planned crime, gagged and sedated, and then taken to a room in the fields that housed a tubewell for irrigation. Here, she was gang-raped.
The woman was later dropped off at the Kanina bus stop in Mahendragarh, several kilometres from her home, from where one of the accused, Manish, actually called her father on his mobile and asked him to pick his daughter up.
“I knew him. I knew him well,” says the 19-year-old’s distraught father, who had driven his bike to Kanina that morning to find her lying unconscious at the bus stop. “Manish was the boy who called me. There were two others, Nishu and Pankaj; all three of them were from our village. Jab woh chhote thhe, unko kabaddi sikhaya tha maine (I taught them kabaddi when they were kids).”
The 19-year-old’s father, who tells me he played kabaddi at the state-level in Haryana, now trains young boys and girls in the village school. “Some of them get into colleges, into the Army through sports quota. Uncle is very good,” pipes in the woman’s cousin, who has walked in at this time.
Pankaj – the survivor’s father tells me – was also similarly trained by him. “The kabaddi I taught him helped him get into the Army,” he says.
“She Fainted When the Cops Took Her to the Spot”
Our conversation is often punctuated by the sound of the policeman, sent from the local Nahar PS, pacing back and forth in the little courtyard outside – and by the occasional mumbling that issues from the blue bedsheet that covers the 19-year-old survivor. Each time she makes an incoherent sound, her mother, seated opposite me, starts to cry. Through much of our conversation, in fact, her eyes are teary and she readies the tip of her yellow dupatta between her fingers to dab at them.
“She wasn’t this badly off towards the end of her stay in the hospital,” her mother says. “On Thursday, when she was first released from the civil hospital, police took her to the spot where it all happened, to identify it. They said it was part of the probe. Bus stop dekhke hi behosh ho gayi... (She took one look at the bus stop and fainted).”
The woman was released on Friday evening, and by her mother’s account, was worse off by the sudden shock.
“Kabhi kabhi apne bhai ko dekhke bol uthti hai – ‘tu kaun hai’? (Sometimes, she looks at her brother and mutters, ‘who are you?’) In the initial days, she couldn’t recognise me or her father either. Now, she remains mostly terrified. The doctors have asked us not to discuss the case with her at all. Instead, we should make sure she goes out, gets fresh air....” her mother says, dissolving into tears.
While at the hospital, initial conversations about the rape would throw her into uncontrollable fits of crying and screaming, says the mother. “She wasn’t able to speak to the cops much when they came to visit. The hospital staff were kind to her and kept telling us, “unse doosri baat kijiye” (‘talk to her about other things’)”.
Since her coming home late Friday night, “she has had one meal of roti-subzi,” her mother tells me. “I fed it to her, and she fell asleep again, immediately after.”
While currently in second year of college, her daughter has enrolled for a number of central government competitive exams. “She wanted to secure a job as soon as possible,” her parents explain, allowing a hint of pride to creep into their voices as they glance almost inadvertently at their young daughter in the other room, and mention that she had cleared the entrance for a job at the Post Office.
“That job would be state-based. But our daughter wasn’t restricting herself. The day this happened to her, she was going to the coaching centre for her Railway Services entrance. If she got it, it would mean she’d be posted anywhere in the country.”
The survivor missed that exam – which was on 19 September – while recovering in the hospital. Her parents add that they cannot even think of examinations, and where she is placed with them, right now. “Haalat dekho uski,” her mother says beseechingly. “Kya padhegi aur kya pariksha degi?” (‘Look at her condition. How will she study and how will she sit for any exams?’) An array of books sit on a shelf behind her mother, barely visible in the dark.
The survivor’s coaching fee at Rs 5,400 was higher than what her father – the sole earning member of the family – made at his school (Rs 5,000). Yet, they’d wanted to persevere to ensure their daughter got a good education and wasn’t held back in any way.
A Call For Justice
After a hushed conversation between her parents, her father walks out and over to his daughter’s bedside again, this time bending over to straighten the creases and folds in her bedsheet. In response to a question, her mother tells me that psychological counselling was provided to her at the hospital.
“I was glad someone was speaking to her about how she felt – but she didn’t say much. She only spoke for a few minutes….”
The family turned down an offer of compensation from the Haryana government that came days after the 19-year-old woman’s rape, asserting that they wanted justice, not compensation. At that time, not a single arrest had been made in the case. An unforgivable delay in beginning the investigation after an FIR was filed also resulted in public outcry and a couple of transfers in the police department.
Today, an SIT – formed to bring the criminals to justice – has arrested eight people.
As I proceed to leave, her mother’s voice rises for the first time since our conversation began, to reiterate that plea: “We just want justice for our girl. We want those criminals punished. Can you help us? Can you also ensure justice? I want to tell everyone – ‘please make sure they don’t get away’”.
The revving of a motorcycle sounds in the distance. The second policeman is here to relieve the first sentinel of his duty. Other than that, there is still silence.
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