June 8, 1998

A gangrape victim's fresh ordeal shocks the state, as her tormentors go scot-free.

By Rohit Parihar

As she stepped out of her Mahavir Nagar office in Jaipur on May 22, the 27-year-old girl perhaps did not realise how close she was to reliving her battered past. The victim of seven years of sexual harassment, which ended in a gangrape that shook the state in September last year, she simply disappeared after leaving her office. For four hours, there was no clue about her whereabouts. Her father, a freelance journalist, suspected foul play and called in the police and women's activist groups when the autorickshaw -- which routinely picked her up from office -- returned home empty.

Later in the evening, she surfaced at the residence of a state government official, Jasraj Sevda Chaudhry. Distraught and dishevelled, she said she wanted to make a telephone call. "I am the J.C. Bose girl," she said. Even kids in Jaipur were familiar with the incident at the J.C.Bose Hostel in the city in September last year in which a young woman was gangraped by nine men, some of them powerful and well connected enough to ensure that the long arm of the law did not reach them.

The bizarre rape of an already shaken gangrape victim, seemingly as a punishment for accusing some influential and politically connected persons in the earlier case, sent shock waves across the country. The incident also rocked Parliament last week, besides putting the Bhairon Singh Shekhawat Government in Rajasthan and the state police on the defensive.

In September, the police were accused of dithering on the case. This time, they ensured they made no mistake. Even before the girl was taken to the police station to lodge a formal complaint, the police had picked up Suresh Yadav, a property dealer, for interrogation following a complaint from the girl's father that Yadav had allegedly approached her on behalf of the two persons -- an accused, Dharmender Singh Punia, and a suspect Prehlad Singh Krishaniya -- allegedly involved in the September gangrape case.

But trouble arose even before the police could begin to work on the case. In her first statement, she claimed that two masked men had forcibly taken her into a Maruti van with tinted glasses. They warned her of dire consequences if she named Dharmender and Prehlad in court, and then raped her after drugging her.

For four days, the police grilled Yadav -- father of four children -- to try and crack the case, though he maintained that he was not involved in the rape. On May 27, when Mohini Giri, chairperson of the National Commission for Women, met her, the victim retracted her original story and implicated Yadav. In a fresh statement, she alleged that Yadav was blackmailing her. On May 22, she had called him to her office to say that she would pay up. When he met her outside her office, Yadav insisted on taking her to his old shop in Mansarovar Colony where, she alleges, one of three masked men present raped her.

The police are foxed at this sudden change of tack. Not only has it forced them to alter their line of investigation but also test the veracity of her new statement. Yadav has denied the story and says he has not had any contact with the victim for the past one and a half months. The police say that Yadav's shop is located in the midst of a market and such an incident in the evening when the market is generally crowded would not have gone unnoticed. The change of statement has not only cast a shadow on her credibility, but also raises doubts about her mental state.

Women's organisations, however, say considering the girl's past and the fact that she was raped twice within nine months, it is hardly surprising that she is a mental wreck. Her ordeal began in 1990, when she was just 19 years old. A Class X dropout, she got involved with a man who promised to marry her. However, he sexually exploited her for some time and then, saying that he possessed nude photographs of her, he began to blackmail her into having sex with his friends, often at places that he had arranged. On September 5 last year, she was brought to the J.C. Bose hostel, where nine persons, some reportedly policemen, raped her. When they finally released her, she sought the help of the hostel watchman to lodge a complaint with the police, who registered two cases. But investigation into the cases has been slow. Nearly nine months later, three of the nine suspects in the gangrape case are still at large, while only six of the 15 accused of sexually exploiting her for over seven years have been nabbed. The reason, it is believed, is because some of the accused are powerful. Dharmender is the son of an ASP and Prehlad is a trainee DSP, and the son-in-law of influential Jat leader Richpal Singh Mirdha, of the BJP. While Dharmender is absconding, Prehlad's name was deleted from the list of suspects even though the victim had identified him.

The irony is that while the culprits are still at large, the victim is being branded as a woman of dubious character. The state administration is using the contradictions in her statements as well as her past to paint her as a woman of loose morals. Police officials do not rule out the possibility of influential persons threatening her to change her statements. "She could be traumatised not just by these incidents, but also by the threat to her life," says her father. Secretary of the Bal Rashmi Society Alice Garg, who has been supporting her cause, says she is at a loss to explain the change in the victim's statement and calls for a deeper investigation. "We want the truth. Let a team of the police and a few independent, credible persons be constituted to examine every aspect of this case -- even the aspect of her character."

But that may not be the end of the matter. Says Jaipur dig Arvind Jain: "I doubt if we can get a fair opinion that will help her and the police in arresting the accused." The remark and her confused statements, shortly before her appearance in court to record her statement in the earlier cases, are likely to create problems for her and the prosecution.

Chief Minister Shekhawat, meanwhile, is grappling with the political fallout of the incident and has ordered a CBI inquiry to stem the tide of criticism. PCC chief Ashok Gehlot, MP, has demanded Shekhawat's resignation and says the case and other incidents of rape and murder in the state would be among his party's planks for the Assembly elections due by the year-end. No doubt the influential accused are a sizeable vote bank, but will the chief minister pay heed to his larger constituency?

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