Five
years after Nirbhaya's gang-rape and murder in Delhi on 16 December 2012 that made headlines all over the world, what
does her village in eastern Uttar Pradesh look like? And how has it
been for other women around, those who, not unlike Nirbhaya, dare to
dream?
Preliminary
encounters
‘Are
you looking for bitiya’s [daughter's] house?’ a vegetable vendor asks as I and a writer-lawyer, my
contact in Ballia, try to navigate our way into the dark alleys of
the Medaura Kalan village, quite far from the highway. In this part
of eastern Uttar Pradesh, the evening is scary, unrelieved by lit-up
shopping centres and street crossings. People here have no idea of
the evening
one talks about in a city.
Named Nirbhaya (meaning "fearless") by people, the 23-year-old student whose rape and murder in December 2012
triggered huge protests all across India, was from here. In her
familial village people still fondly recall her as ‘bitiya’,
their daughter who had gone to the big city to pursue a career in
physiotherapy but did not come home.
Instructed
by a village elder, a boy of about 10 escorts us through a few narrow
lanes till we reach the house, of the village chief, the
pradhan.
It’s
here that we
hope to have our initial conversation about life in the village in
the shadow of a daughter’s death. The pradhan
is
expected to tell us where exactly to go to meet Nirbhaya’s extended
family.
A
boy opens the door. The ground floor is a cowshed from where we are
led up the stairs. Walking up, we can hear the television belting out
programmes in Bhojpuri. There’s a cot in the living room where we
are asked to wait for pradhan-ji.
A
while later, of the two men in the inner room, one comes out to meet
us.
When
I start noting down his name, he protests hesitantly: ‘I mean I am
not the actual pradhan,
it’s my wife.’ Reservations for women in the Panchayati Raj
institutions has facilitated their empowerment at the village level.
In many cases though, they become mere signing authorities
overshadowed by their husbands who act like the village heads. When I
insist on meeting her, the husband hedges: ‘But she is not that
smart, you know, in speaking and all.’ I persist saying it really
doesn’t matter. His reluctance is visible. The wife, he tells me,
stays in another house preferring the anonymity of the inner
courtyard; this place is meant for receiving visitors and
entertaining guests. But before we meet her, we have to meet the
members of Nirbhaya’s family.
Bitiya’s
home
Nirbhaya’s
parents live in Delhi and visit their ancestral village from time to
time to be with their clan. The family of her father’s brother here
represents what could have been her home. Lalji Singh, her father’s
uncle, is here with us. We start talking about the political parties
that had come to the village after the 2012 incident. ‘The hospital
that Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had promised came up,’ the
elderly man says recalling how the village landscape changed in the
years since. ‘But there are no doctors. We are not sure about the
qualifications of the two who come to dole out medicines for cold and
cough. Well, now very few medicines are left. The doctor’s quarter
is still unfinished and the floor – still kutcha. The water tank is
empty and there is no electricity.’
There
was also talk of a school. ‘But there wasn’t enough land for that
so nothing came of it.’ Lalji looked disappointed and at the same
time conscious that the big focus on the back-of-the-beyond village
was because of the brutalities perpetrated on Nirbhaya, her death
turning into international headlines.
By
now Nirbhaya’s aunt, along with the actual village head, and some other
villagers, have gathered around us. People of the village remember
and keep counting the promises that had been made, like a road
connecting the village to the primary school. ‘That’s right,’
Lalji says. ‘But the people who came to build the road messed up.
They started laying the road at one place and the building material
landed up in another village.’ He recalls that the district
magistrate at that time, who had come with an engineer, asked what
the village needed. The collector had taken the responsibility of
starting an inter-college in the area, but he got transferred before
he could set up the institution.
Medaura
Kalan had been declared a Lohia village, giving its development
issues a new focus under the programme named after the socialist icon
and freedom fighter Ram Manohar Lohia. Interestingly, the Samajwadi
Party, ruling UP at that time, reveres him as its ideological guru.
‘The contractors who had started work here did not complete it,’
Lalji grumbled. ‘They did not even pay the bills of the local
shopkeepers, rather took away 500 bricks and a truckful of sand that
we had brought for the family’s use.’
The
young men in the family had been promised jobs. ‘Six of our boys
should have got jobs. Vacancies are there. But the Chief Minister
only asked them to fill up the forms.’ Lalji says he does not care
so much about the jobs as for some genuine work for the village
community. An efficient primary health centre or a girls’ school.
‘Our daughters must not cycle 12 kilometres to school.’
At
the mention of girls, Bhagmani Pandey, Nirbhaya's aunt, raises the
issue I have been hesitating to raise. ‘We want justice for our
bitiya,
and punishment for the culprits. After the incident, girls are even
more afraid to step out of home for their courses.’ She speaks of
the corruption in the system and deplores that there is no proper
road connecting the village to Ballia town. I turn to Savita Devi,
the village head, for her opinion. After a lot of reluctance, she
says, ‘You people know better.’
A silhouette of Nirbhaya's aunt in their familial house
Lalji
shakes his head in disapproval over what he calls a ‘toothless law’
that does not deter criminals. The National Crime Records Bureau
shows Uttar Pradesh as the state with the highest number of murders
in 2016, and a 12.4 per cent increase in rape cases from 2015. After
Yogi Adityanath took over as Chief Minister in 2017, he announced the
formation of ‘anti-Romeo squads’ for the safety of women. Singh
is dismissive of the step: ‘Those squads end up harming the ones
they are supposed to protect. In such conditions how can women work
alongside men? Where is the support from the government that would
have given confidence to women about their safety? I admire the women
who are working outside their homes because they risk everything to
go out.’ He sighs. ‘So many media people have been here. I know
you are doing your job. But I wish it could change the way things
are.’
Returning
from the village, we come across a wedding marquee – bustling, all
lit up. A few metres away was a field plunged in darkness; little
boys are playing there. Girls of the same age have huddled up in the
arc of the light near the entrance, slipping out of their parents’
cautious circle under the marquee. But they do not move any farther
from the entrance, clinging to each other in the security of the
festive lights. Some distance ahead, police barriers display
emergency phone numbers in bold – to be called when a girl is
facing sexual harassment.
Then
and now
It
has been five years since Nirbhaya’s tragic death following her brutal
gang-rape on a moving bus one winter evening in Delhi. The incident
had sparked protests, anger, debate, schemes, funds . . . What has
all this meant for the other young women in Ballia? Have they felt
strengthened by the voices demanding justice, or has the memory of
what Nirbhaya faced made them warier? Has it changed anything about the
way men look at women, behave with them?
On
8 August 2017, the accused Prince (Aditya) Tiwari, who had been
harassing Ragini
Dubey, slit
her throat when she was going to school along with her sister in
Bajah village in Ballia. The 17-year-old’s savage killing made
headlines and has got considerable attention from the local media.
Journalists here say this might not have been the case a few years
ago, considering violence against women is accepted as the norm and
not the exception in this part of the country.
The
village of Bajah where Ragini’s family lives is
not far from the main road. The men standing by the roadside direct
us to the house after making sure we know her father.
In
the courtyard, two men sit under a newly pitched tent; one of them is
shaving. They get up from their chairs and ask us to sit. We learn
that they are policemen posted there for the family’s security.
A makeshift post for the policemen guarding Ragini's house
Ragini’s
mother, Vandana Dubey, angrily recalls the pradhan’s
threat to the family. Kripashankar Tiwari, co-accused in Ragini’s
murder and father of Prince, had bragged to the family after the
incident that he would ‘buy’ those who mattered in the local
police setup and the administration. Vandana is distraught that
Prince has still not been brought under the National Security Act. In
the middle of the conversation, her 11-year-old son comes in and
gives vent to his sense of outrage. Looking grave, his voice urgent,
the boy adds bits of information he fears his mother is forgetting.
Ragini
was close to her grandmother, who recounts her many talents and
ambitions, and her concern for the family. ‘I
no longer stand outside the house where Ragini used to wave at me
every morning before going to school. It is too painful.’ Sumitra
Devi is a resolute woman. She repeats her daughter-in-law’s
statement: ‘The pradhan
bragged that he would pay off everyone who is dealing with the case.
Please write this and put it under my name. What he said makes me
wonder if we would ever get justice.’
She
cries, much like Ragini’s mother and sister, throughout the
conversation. ‘I have seen my daughters being dominated by their
spouses, and I feel terrible that the children I have raised with so
much love are no longer free to do what they want in their marital
homes.’ That is why she decided to do everything possible to get
her granddaughters educated and make them independent. ‘These girls
are sometimes upset if I scold them for watching TV. But I tell them
they can do all this later, now is the time to study and make
something of their lives. All of them are studying for the
qualifications to work, not just to get married.’
Ragini
wanted to be an airhostess, ‘There was nobody like her,’ Sumitra
Devi says wistfully. ‘Each morning before going to school she would
take my blessings. My husband, dead now, was in the army, and Ragini
would say that after her grandfather, she would be the one to make
the family proud. I was hoping these girls would do even better than
my sons. Now, Ragini’s life has been cruelly ended, and her dreams
shattered.’
Our
conversation is suddenly disrupted by the high pitch of an
altercation. Shweta, Ragini’s sister, holds my hand and asks
me to come inside to carry on with the conversation. The heated
argument is between the policemen outside the house and someone who
works at the pradhan’s
house, who had come to mouth abuses against this grief-stricken,
beleaguered family. Ragini’s mother goes outside and tries to
dissuade the policemen from the fight. A police vehicle reaches the
spot after some time and the cops offer some words of assurance to
the housewife.
The
incident gets reported in the local papers the next day.
The
house of the accused is right next to the Pandeys’. Sumitra Devi
says the neighbours keep trying to make trouble in such ways, perhaps
emboldened by the pradhan’s
release on bail, which has been a huge setback to Ragini’s family
and dwindled their hopes for justice. When Ragini’s mother comes
back in, she sounds apologetic. ‘I don’t know what all we have
been saying to you, a bit emotionally charged as we are. You write
what you find fit and proper.’
Shweta
says to her mother, ‘Don’t you think she knows? She does this
every day.’ The eldest of the four sisters, Neha, works in Banaras
as a dietician in a well-known hospital. Shweta has finished her
graduation. She was planning to get enrolled in a master’s course
when tragedy struck disrupting the rhythm of the aspirational family.
Shweta’s despair shows through, ‘We sisters are the kind of
people who would always be running around, for classes, or to fill up
some forms, or to know about some job opportunities.’ All that has
now come to a halt. Shweta’s family is too scared to let her or the
other girls out. Her youngest sister has also been pulled out of
school because she was being harassed there. The pradhan’s
invisible hand has been out to hammer down her daughters’ big
dreams, Vandana Dubey remonstrates. The principal said that the
school could no longer take the responsibility for her safety. ‘Can
you believe it?’ Shweta gasps. ‘For four months we have not
stepped out of the house.’
Ragini's home
The
pradhan-Dubey
family conflict, played out on a larger scale, captures the binary
between the entrenched patriarchy and the technology-induced
progressive forces in rural India. Nirbhaya, Ragini and her brave
sisters stand for the new world that beckons them with its
possibilities. The rapists on the moving bus and the obscurantist
village heads are out to turn the girls’ aspirations into a
hair-raising nightmare.
Quartz
India
recently carried a report about Girija Borker’s research pointing
to a new trend among the young women in Delhi opting for colleges not
for the quality of education they offer but their proximity to their
homes. If this trend gains further momentum and travels to different
parts of the country, it will deal a huge blow to the cause of
women’s education. Not just that, the number of women in the
premier institutions will significantly come down, resulting in a
decrease in their share in higher education. In gender terms, the
education scenario will be badly skewed, impacting the professional
fields consequently. No wonder in the villages and small towns of
Uttar Pradesh, for those like the Dubey sisters it is now a challenge
to step out of their homes breaking the barrier of fear to go to
class.
Shweta
is tired of being scared and hiding at home because the baddies are
prowling the street. ‘My interest is in computers. I came to know
of an NGO looking for skilled professionals to work with children.
But now everything has got held up.’ Sumitra Devi says in a
remorseful voice, ‘I tell them not to go out. Even when their
mother goes to meet the collector about the case, we hold our breath
till she comes back. Sometimes we think of leaving all this behind
and moving elsewhere. But we are not so rich.’
How
did the 16 December 2012 Delhi gang-rape impact Ballia, where Nirbhaya was from? Has the tragedy that shook the world changed this place?
Sumitra Devi is not so sure. ‘What changes can you expect? Nothing.
I must have committed many sins in my past life to have been born in
Ballia. This is a place for sinners.’ Ragini’s grandmother is
talking of the same place hallowed by the memory of legendary freedom
fighter Mangal Pandey and writers like Hazari Prasad Dwivedi.
The
press and the people
The
locals I talk to commend the media for having constantly followed up
on Ragini’s case, which, they believe, managed to build some
pressure on the police and the administration. However, there is a
less salutary view about the media focusing on the girl’s death in
its love for sensationalism. Still, the fact remains that ordinary
people joined the protests along with the family against the delay in
punishing the culprits. A correspondent of the Amar
Ujala
newspaper who had reported a candle march, says protests were carried
out in Ballia both for Ragini and Nirbhaya. Some people, reports say,
also tried to raise funds to help the families to meet legal
expenses. Sudhir Tiwari, in charge of crime reporting at the Dainik
Jagran in
Ballia,
talks
of the changing reporting trend, the shift in focus from victim
blaming to the action or the lack thereof by the authorities.
Are
things both changing and remaining the same?
Looking
at Ballia, it is hard to definitely know if things have changed when
it comes to violence against women. After Ragini’s killing, people
invested their faith in Superintendent of Police Sujata Singh
following the arrest of the main accused the same day. Yet when his
father got bail and when NSA was not invoked in dealing with the case
as promised, the family started losing hope. Crimes against women do
not show a decline but people have started coming forward to report.
Terror and intimidation no longer can push them into a shell. In
Ragini’s case, people I spoke to, pointed out how Prince, the
accused, had been spoilt by his affluent and influential family’s
indulgence and flawed upbringing. They did not resort to victim
blaming, or at least knew enough about its incorrectness when in
conversation with a journalist. Families of Nirbhaya and Ragini have
stood up for their daughters while in many cases girls are still
scared to tell their parents about harassment for fear of victim
blaming. There is pressure from the media and NGOs on the police to
act. At the same time, if a woman reports harassment right at the
beginning, the police often leave offenders with a warning to avoid
recording the complaints and having to be accountable for it. The
same offenders who are let off then go on to commit much more violent
crimes.
Earlier
in December, a team of girls took out a cycle rally all across UP,
intending to conclude the journey at Nirbhaya’s village. The aim was
to raise awareness about violence against women. Nirbhaya’s parents
came to Lucknow to support the initiative. Perhaps it is in such
small measures – Ragini’s sisters not willing to give up on their
dreams, her mother sitting at the magistrate’s office all day to
submit a petition, Nirbhaya’s parents who had wanted that the shame of violence stays only
with the perpetrators, the girls pedalling along the roads that do
not welcome them – that one can see tendrils of change grow, where
women prove that ‘courage is not the absence of fear, it is acting
in spite of it’.
