It’s a sad day in India’s judicial history, and particularly in UP’s history. Within two days, two rape victims were shot dead in two separate incidents in UP, allegedly to prevent them from testifying. Of these, one of them was an 18-year old girl who was shot dead by unidentified assailants on a bike in Baijapur in Dakshintola area, just two days before she was due to testify in court against the accused in her case.
The girl, accompanied by her cousin on a motorcycle, was on her way to visit a doctor when reportedly four assailants on two motorcycles closed in and fired at her. She suffered two bullet injuries and died on the spot. The assailants escaped after allegedly threatening the victim’s cousin.
Nearby Sitapur was already simmering then from a similarly outrageous incident that took place a day earlier. A 22-year-old rape victim was shot dead in the Maholi police station area of Sitapur district when she was going somewhere with her husband on a bicycle. In the second incident, the girl was shot dead allegedly by the man against whom she had lodged a complaint of rape last year in Mahmudpur village in Sitapur, the police said. The accused Pradeep had come out of jail about two months back and was pressuring the woman to withdraw her complaint, the police said.
Shocking though these are, this is not the first time that such episodes have happened. It is a mark of the failure of our legal system in protecting our women that we can confidently say that this was possibly the third such episode that took place this year.
In February this year, another victim in Mathura was actually shot dead in the court where gunmen opened fire as she prepared to give her statement against a local ‘godman’. The 25-year-old woman had been fighting a rape case for two years against Govindanand Teerath, a former head of an ashram in Vrindavan, and his disciples of raping her. She was supposed to testify against them in a local court when she and her mother came under attack. The fact that the assailants could casually open fire inside a courthouse speaks about the extent to which people can get away with crime under this system.
“It is definitely a failure of the legal system,” said advocate Abha Singh. “For starters, the 18-year-old’s case was coming up for trial four years after she lodged a complaint. The Supreme Court’s directive for fast track courts is not being followed in UP. What’s more, we have failed even when it comes to witness protection, which is why these women were attacked. The accused in the case of the 18-year-old is a college manager, so there is definitely political patronage coming into play here.”
These episodes are also an indication of how weak the data monitoring system of the police is. Scary though the idea is, the unpleasant truth is that given the primitive data and monitoring system used by our police, it is very easy for any criminal to abscond or wipe out evidence. “We don’t have a proper data system in India,” pointed out Abha. “There is no monitoring of criminals when they are out on bail, no checking on their whereabouts to see if they are signing in the register everyday at the local police station, verification of addresses and so on. Even criminals who come out on furlough manage to escape. In many cases, the police deliberately don’t take action themselves.”
What Abha says is necessary to take note of, because in all these cases the accused came out on bail and began pressurising the victim to withdraw the case. When they refused they were shot dead to obliterate all evidence. And this is what happens in most rape cases. The cases take so long to come to trial, by which time the accused is out on bail for years. He harasses the victim to withdraw the case, pressurises the victim into turning hostile and by the time the first trial session begins five years after the complaint was lodged, he has already been absconding, with the system none the wiser.
These women died because our system failed to protect them. Period.
Image Courtesy: BCCL
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