A teenage girl living in Banda, Uttar Pradesh was abducted,months after losing her mother.The girls father, a farm laborer pleaded an assembalyman to find his daughter. The legislator helped rescue the girl and offered to let her live with him as his domestic help. The father agreed. He thought she will be safe there, but that did not happen unfortunately.
The legislator, Purshottam Naresh Dwivedi along with his three other men allegedly raped and beat the 17-year old girl repeatedly. The girl tried to flee, but she was caught, beaten accused of theft and was handed over to the police. The poor girl lived there for a month.
All this is not unusual when a powerful man exploit or sexually assault a women, use their money and political connections to save themselves from legal consequences.
In a place like Banda, there is hardly any chance that a poor girl will manage to get out of jail or those powerful men will be arrested. But this story turns out differently.
We live in a country where rape is considerd as a social taboo. Most of the women don't file their cases unded the pressure that how will the society react, they will be victims of public humliation and may find it difficult to find a future marriage partner.
But this 17-year old girl had courage. She both reported the abuse and stand firm to face the harassment. In addition to this many activist groups and media helped her.
After the girl was arrested her father alerted a group pf female activist who defend women from violence. The group called "Gulabi", or "Pink Sari Gang", tries to reason with abusive husbands in Uttar Pradesh's Bundelkhand district. If that does not work then, they use bamboo sticks to publically humiliate the men until they stop beating their wives, according to founder Sampat Pal Devi.
Devi visited the girl in jail and took the case. The gang protested outside the Banda jail and attracted the attention of local and national media as well as support of opposition party leadres in Banda. Eventually the girl was succesfully released.
The remarkable is that the girl had the courage to report and later face the consequences. this task would not have been called remarkable if our societies norms would have been in our favour thus encouraging justice.
This girl encourages other victimised and molested girls to face the tragedy like brave, fight for their own right and not acting cowardly by finishing off their lives forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment