(Shefali Misra is part of a documentary film called Death Under The MangoTree. She co-authored an independent report on crimes against women, is adevelopment professional and politician with AAP.)
Speculations of murder, hanging and now suicide- can someone please get up and smell the Badaun Rot?
The CBI concludes that the girls committed suicide putting to rest the 'who dunnit' speculations. But why would two minor girls, age 14 and 15, kill themselves and, moreover, manage to lasso their dupattas over a massive mango tree, to hang over a seven-foot high branch. If they killed themselves, how did they manage to pull their bodies three feet above the ground, knot their necks and sustain the strength to hang themselves? Finally, they were able place their slippers right below their 'to be soon dead bodies' and wait to die.
Are we to believe that this is possible?
I am given to understand that the court will now take cognizance of the CBI's report that the cousins committed suicide. One sincerely hopes that the court will ask the right questions and give a more palatable judgment.
The suicide explanation seems convenient - it lets everyone off the hook and plants blame on the voiceless victim. The CBI has cracked the case, the VIP caravans have come and gone, and now the case can be closed.
I found myself standing under the infamous mango tree last week, where six months ago, two girls were allegedly killed and hung. Their bodies remained suspended mid-air for over 12 hours as their deaths were publicized and politicized. I had earlier gone with local leader Hema Badhwar to research the root causes of such heinous crimes.
The mango courtyard served as the parking lot for media vans telecasting globally the horrors of the girls' death.
Everyone stood up - from Ban Ki Moon and the US Department of State to Rahul Gandhi, Rajnath Singh, Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav, Chief Minister of India's most populous state.
The case since then has gone through two enquiries and multiple speculations. The initial postmortem conducted by five doctors called it rape, the forensic analysis on which the CBI relies opines in the negative.
Mid-way into the enquiry, speculations were afloat of the deaths being an honor or assisted killing to cover an inter-caste love affair.
In my recent visit to Katra Sadatgunj last week, this time as the anchor for a documentary film on the hangings, a different story revealed itself. Such cases of sudden deaths, rapes, murders or sodomy are routine and an indicator of much deeper dis-empowerment. UP is no stranger to crimes against women- it is ranked second-lowest in India on the Gender Development Index and records the maximum number of complaints of harassment, murders, dowry deaths and kidnappings as per the National Crime Bureau (2012 figures).
Swastika Mehta, a journalist covering the hangings points to an uncomfortable truth: "It will take more than a suicide or hanging for the badlands of Uttar Pradesh to wake up and the truth to come out. These things are common enough not to even hit front-page headlines. Women are disrespected here and falling in love with someone from another caste is un-imaginable."
Is it such a crime to fall in love or be attracted to someone of another caste to warrant killing oneself if exposed? Apparently it is! Media reports indicate that the CBI found 250 odd phone-calls shared between an upper-caste Yadav boy and one of the girls. In a social milieu where caste shapes the determinants of all relations, an inter-caste love affair is unacceptable and spat upon.
Men's perceptions about such women are terrible. "Several say that the worst recipe to trouble is handing a mobile phone to a girl who will misuse it, titillate men and creates a mess,'' adds Swastika.
What is equally appalling and something the CBI report will not talk about is that Katra Sadatgunj seems to have become a mute witness to its own rot. During the film shoot, I met with Laxmi Kumari and her cousins making their way to the village outskirts to relieve themselves. I ask her if they feel safe and whether they got the toilets that were promised after it was revealed that the cousins went missing when they allegedly left their home to relieve themselves in a field.
"No we don't have toilets. Our family doesn't even know. We don't even know that toilet schemes were announced..... when we go out in the night, boys still come and flash torch lights on us, make lewd gestures and remarks. We control ourselves during the day and move to the fields only in the mornings or night'' replies Laxmi frankly.
Nothing else has changed in Katra Sadatgunj either! The local government school still serves putrid food and has absent teachers, drains are blocked, power supply is available just three hours a day and eve-teasing, molestation, violence against women are reported regularly. The only visible development is the construction of 108 pink and green toilets made by Sulabh International - certainly not enough for a village of 6000 people. Laxmi says none are located near her.
Finally, so perverse is the subjugation of women here that even their top-most elected leader is forbidden from performing her functions. Kamal Kant Tiwari who claims to be the Pradhan (village head) and is in-charge of village governance and VIP protocol is actually a proxy. He speaks openly about been in-charge since 2010 and blames poorly-funded schemes for the condition of the village. He fails to even acknowledge the existence of his wife Babli Tiwari who is the real Pradhan. Babli, a bright woman, has not participated in village governance for the last four years of her term.
Mayurika Biswas, director of a documentary-in-progress on the Badaun killings, remarks, "To get to the truth of what really happened that night one must understand the social triggers that perpetrates such violence''.
To imagine a village just six hours from Delhi as the possibly compliant home of a crime of such horror is a scathing indictment of our true state. This is not a center-versus-state responsibility point either. What we are witnessing in Badaun is the aggregation of the worst form of apathy towards our women and girls and it will not change until someone decides to get their hands dirty and deal with the real rot.
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