Blindfolded Justice"Jumman Seikh felt an acute sense of responsibility as soon as he sat on the high chair of justice, the ‘Sarpanch’. He thought, he was sitting on the high seat of justice and fairness, whatever was uttered by him as a judge, became the voice of the God himself. There was no space for petty, selfish thoughts in God’s voice. Even a slight deviation from the truth was not acceptable." from Munshi Prem Chand’s ‘Panch Parmeswhar’Roorkee is a significant town in the Haridwar District of Uttarakhand. India’s first engineering college 'Thomson College of Engineering' was established here, which is now an IIT. The town is established on the banks of the Ganga Canal, designed by Colonel Cautley. His architectural genius has won him the title ‘Modern Bhagirath’. The canals snake through into several parts of Uttar Pradesh like arteries of prosperity where irrigation has largely been made possible because of this canal.
Roorkee has acquired a cosmopolitan milieu on account of the IIT and military presence, while it is till today surrounded by rural pockets. These rural pockets resemble Muzaffarnagar and Saharanpur much more than Haridwar in their social culture and folk traditions.
The year 1996 saw an inhuman act being perpetrated that could shake anyone’s faith in the entire humanity. This mass-crime also put an indelible smear on our centuries’ old system of village justice, the Panchayat. This incident, involving a twenty year old poor labourer and his wife, is sure to incite extreme revulsion in the minds of the reader, as it did then in us, forcing us to hang our heads in shame at the very thought that such an atrocity could be perpetrated in the name of dispensing justice. What was even more shocking here was that not even a single individual had come forward to prevent this wrong from being committed against the young, poor couple.
One day, while I was working in my office in Haridwar, I received a phone call from a station in charge. He sounded dazed, as if a ghost had just paid him a visit. He reported to me, in a shaking voice, that a poor labourer had come to his station riding a bullock cart from the nearby village. On the bullock cart had been loaded a stringed cot on which was lying the poor man’s wife. The woman was almost unconscious, unable to move her limbs, unable to utter a word. She had been brutally raped, sexually assaulted, by more than fifteen men!
The incident was indeed gravely serious. There was not a moment to lose. The station in charge was supposed to act quickly rather than tremble in fear. My first instruction to him was to ensure that the woman received medical help immediately. I rushed to the crime site while making a mental note that the hospital would be my next stop. Roorkee is about thirty kilometres away from Haridwar. By the time I reached Roorkee, the woman had been admitted to the hospital. The doctor informed me that the victim had suffered severe mental strain. She was not in a position to speak because of this. Continued physical abuse had ensured that she was almost a wreck, a vegetable that could neither move a limb, nor even sit up. Thankfully, The doctor assured me that she was out of the danger zone and would survive and live to tell her horrendous tale.
My presence at the hospital ensured that she was treated with even more care. She was now being provided the best possible medication and injections. I was apprehensive that the news of this woman’s ordeal would spread quickly and it would be talked about repeatedly in the general ward, with staff and visitors paying her repeated visits out of a convoluted curiosity. This could hurt the tormented woman even more. I ensured that she was shifted to a private ward, protected from onlookers and then tried to ascertain the facts from the woman’s husband. What I heard from him was the most incredible tale of human beastliness.
The man was a twenty two year old, lean, impoverished labourer. His clothes were soiled and tattered. His face and lean frame betrayed years of backbreaking bonded labour. He told me that his wife and he worked together in a nearby brick kiln as daily wage labourers. It was a hard life and they could barely make both ends meet. The contractor who ran the kiln employed an accountant who cast an evil eye on his wife. He was able to entice her gradually, showing off his relatively wealthy position.
He candidly admitted that he understood her predicament, since ever since they had married she had been forced to perform the backbreaking task of lugging rocks and sand. The hopes for a comfortable existence had disappeared for her soon after their wedding day. There was no scope for even any hint of marital bliss, as they would have to slog for ten to twelve hours every day. When they reached the hovel they called home, they would crash into their beds. And the next day once again brought nothing but backbreaking work besides the unending household chores.
The woman left the labourer and eloped with the accountant, nursing hopes for a better existence, an escape from the drudgery of life at the brick kiln. She could not resist the temptation of riding the accountant’s motorcycle, an enticement so strong that she had forgotten her doting husband and even the insurmountable caste barriers. The glimmer of hope of a better life entrapped her being completely. And, the poor man’s affections for his wife still did not diminish.
The husband was taken aback, by his wife’s sudden disappearance. He pleaded before the contractor to help search for his wife. The contractor assured him that he would help. The husband picked up his bicycle and went out in search of his lost companion. After a relentless month long search, he finally managed to track her down. During this period the accountant had sexually exploited this woman. Her dreams of a better life had come crashing down. The accountant had his own family to look after and she was soon reduced to the status of a concubine. He gave her no money, abused her all the time and her existence was worse than that of a prisoner. She longed for the tenderness that her earlier man displayed towards her. With the labourer, existence was tough, but one could at least survive with one’s self respect intact and one was not be reduced to being a sexual slave.
After several rounds of pleadings and negotiations, the poor and powerless labourer managed to free his wife from the clutches of the accountant. Such is the helplessness that poverty imposes. This, however, did not damage the man’s spirit or depreciate his love for the woman he had taken as his wife. He took the incident in his stride and accepted his beloved once again, unconditionally. He had neither the capacity nor the desire to seek revenge over the man who had stolen his love away from him. Nor did he nurse any ill feeling towards the woman who had left him for a more comfortable existence. He was contented that his wife had come back to him and did not want anything other than a life of togetherness.
It was late evening when he returned to his village along with his wife. The news of their arrival soon reached the ears of all and sundry in the village. Rural life does not afford a person any privacy. What transpires in one's life becomes a subject matter of public debate and censure. People know everything about everyone and each feels entitled to hold and express opinions on the other’s life. It was no different for this recently reunited couple.
This was an occasion for the so-called wise elders of the village to come together, debate and decide. After all, they were the upholders of values, the guardians of social propriety. They shouldered the onerous responsibility of protecting ‘dignity’ of caste and ‘culture’. They called for the Panchayat, a council for judgement, of the entire community.
The presence of so many elders intimidated the couple. Important people in the caste hierarchy had all come to participate in this trial. The poor man was forced to relive the woeful tale of his wife’s elopement and return before the entire community. Then it was the turn of the upholders of morality to sit in judgement. For hours the debates raged on. After splitting hair on the circumstances that transpired, the Panchayat came up with a decision that puts all of humanity to shame. They held the woman’s lack of character expressly responsible for the suffering of the man. Shockingly, their judgement reflected complete lack of even the faintest trace of human feelings.
According to them, the woman’s biggest misdeed was to elope with a man from another caste. They held that the woman’s running away had brought shame to their own caste by suggesting through her actions that all males from their caste had been rendered impotent. This was an unpardonable crime in their widely shut minds. In their judgement, such a challenge, such an insult to their manhood, their caste superiority, could not be condoned and the men folk of the community would now have to prove to the woman that they were indeed virile and potent. How else could they do that but by raping her, in full knowledge of the entire community?
This was Stone Age justice being dispensed in modern India. The ‘accused’ woman was not even granted an opportunity to present her version before the judgement was pronounced. The fact that the man was not willing to press any charge against the woman was completely disregarded. Perhaps the most disgusting aspect of the entire charade of justice was the unconditional public acceptance of this absurd and sham ‘justice’. Not a whimper of protest rose from anywhere; no one could muster an iota of courage to come to the woman’s aid.
After the Panchayat had pronounced its wicked and senseless judgement, the men began to compete with each other to prove their potency. The devilish dance of sexuality, the naked plunder of human values and relationships continued for hours as this helpless, pleading man stood at the door while sixteen men, one after the other, entered his humble home and proved their ‘manhood’ before a woman who had been reduced to nothing but a corpse. This beastly dispensation of ‘justice’ began at nine and carried on well past midnight when the woman finally lay unconscious, almost dead, drained of all dignity and spirit.
Now the same ‘virile’ men were frightened of her unconscious state, out of their wits that their ‘justice’ had killed the woman. The very thought of going to jail was enough to make their manhood disappear into thin air.
As I heard this horrific account I had to pinch myself to bring the realisation that I was sitting in the present times and not the dark ages. I was indignant, bursting with rage, as this calm and composed man narrated his story. What really made me blow my fuse was that not even one soul in the entire village had the guts to raise a voice against this inhuman act or even make an effort to reach the police.
The next morning, this man had put the wife on the ramshackle bullock cart and brought her corpse like figure to the police station. How could we condone such travesty of justice in the name of caste based Panchayats was a question that refused to go out of my brain. I asked the station in charge to accompany me to the crime scene.
As I approached the mud shack of this man, I relived the horror once again in my mind. The shack was situated in one corner of the village. Several such shacks had been built around a courtyard and one belonged to this couple of misfortune. This courtyard was the scene of the beastly ‘justice’, the deplorable crime against all of humanity.
I ordered immediate arrest of all sixteen men who had raped the woman with the application of sections such crime entails. That each and every member of the Panchayat that had pronounced the shameful verdict would be placed under immediate arrest as accomplices in rape was something that I ensured before leaving the spot. The station in charge tried his best to explain that this would unleash caste animosity against the police. Mass arrests would attract unnecessary media attention. I was adamant and firmly believed that such crime had to be dealt with swiftly, firmly and adequately. There was no room for compassion just because the modus operandi of the criminals smacked of mass hysteria. Action had to be swift, there was no room for delay.
It was also quietly suggested to me that the couple could withdraw charges against the community, if the community agreed to offer some compensation. It was clear as day now why the station in charge was trembling while he gave me the news of the half-dead woman’s arrival. What cripples our system at times is the terrible tragedy of people trying to condone wrong in an effort to save their own skin. My officer was trembling at the sight of this woman because he felt he would be held responsible for such a major crime occurring in his jurisdiction. He feared suspension from service and wanted to hush up the matter fearing for his career.
How could we hold the officer responsible? Even if he had been pro-active, he could not have managed to prevent a well thought out social crime that had the entire community’s sanction and approval. This mass crime was not an act of greed or passion; it was a result of a diseased mentality. The hysteria of caste honour had overtaken humanity, the community not even bothering to spare a thought for the havoc being wreaked on two lives, almost having claiming the woman’s.
I reassured the officer that he would not be proceeded against. I drilled into him that such heinous crimes would only multiply if we chose to brush them under the carpet. As policemen it was our bounden duty to take cognizance of such social wrongs and try to punish the guilty. As a result, all the Panchayat members and the men who wanted to be ‘living epitomes of high caste manhood’ were paraded to jail and proceeded against.
The magnitude of the incident became evident to me only the next day when I looked at the newspapers. Every National newspaper carried the incident in its lead stories. The third day, a team from the National Commission for Women came to make inquiries. Media and the Commission alike criticised the crime and yet praised the promptness of the police action.
Now the officer had understood that he would have been an accomplice in this crime if he had hushed up the matter. Police, would have failed in its duty to coming to the aid of humanity, had we not acted. After all, do we not become partners in crime if we allow the criminals to go scot- free?
