
“Shall we have fun?” a
junior told constable Aradhya as he put his service revolver to her head. She
was inside a police vehicle, in the dead of night somewhere near Jhansi in
Uttar Pradesh (UP). The constable had stalked her the entire night at a mela where
they were deployed. She was gang-raped by two policemen, the men she served
with, and the police driver. After they raped her, the constables discussed
whether they should kill her. Eighteen months later there is no case, the
constables continue to work in the force, a short distance from her police
station.
Just about five per
cent (84,479) of the 16.7 lakh-strong Indian police force is made up of women.
Almost all the women enter at the lowest ranks, and eventually retire at the
same rank. Most are denied active policing roles, except for bandobast—large
scale deployment for crowd control and VIP movement—and spend their careers
doing tasks the male-dominated force deems fit for them. This includes writing
reports, housekeeping at police stations and the houses of senior officers, and
other such duties.
Sexual assault and
harassment in police forces across the country is startlingly frequent, a Fountain
Ink investigation has revealed. It is as a matter of routine hushed
up, and even in cases where victims persist—often at a great cost—justice is
elusive. Police personnel from the ranks of constable to DGP across five states
were interviewed, and case records reviewed in the course of the investigation.
Almost all of them refused to be named; they couldn’t be seen talking negatively
about the force. Those who spoke did so with great unease.
In the police, there
is a minimum-hassle approach to rape or “354” as cops call it after the Indian
Penal Code section that defines sexual offences. It is heightened when both the
victim and the perpetrator are one of their own.
“You know, men and
women, when they are together, sometimes this happens,” said an
Inspector-General (IG) of police at the iconic neo-Gothic headquarters of the
Mumbai police at Crawford Market. His views on the matter are almost Victorian,
perhaps fittingly for the police force which itself is a remnant of colonial
rule.
“The police are no
different than the rest of society,” he said.
A constable in north
Mumbai said male cops often comment about the looks of policewomen they work
with. “The problem starts with the uniform. Policewomen feel uncomfortable
wearing the fitted pants that draws a lot taunts on their figure. Passing
judgment and backslapping are common.” The inspector said this practice was
almost universal in police stations in Mumbai.
When a policewoman
musters the courage to report harassment or assault, nothing comes of it. In at
least five cases that Fountain Ink tracked—three in
Maharashtra, one in Odisha and one in UP—the matter was hushed up or the accounts
of victims were discredited. Cases are often finished off at the level of a
departmental inquiry; sometimes a short suspension may be in order.
“Like a smack on the
hand with a ruler,” said constable Kavita who was sexually assaulted at Sewri
Port while she was on patrol one evening in April 2016. The cops at the police
station tried their best to underplay the matter. They discouraged the filing
of an FIR and the constable’s husband backed the superiors to avoid “blackening
their name”. She relented, but even departmentally nothing happened. The
constable who assaulted her continued to work by her side. He was simply
ordered to issue an apology for sexually molesting her. He was finally
suspended when a woman officer took charge. When I called the officer to know
more about the case, she said coldly, “You’ll find that the girl has retracted
her statement.”
In at least two other
cases lower-ranked complainants continued to take orders or work alongside men
they accused of sexual assault.
A woman police
inspector in Mumbai, a statistical rarity, said: “You think it’s easy for us to
report sexual assault when we are the victims?” She claimed that of the 94
police stations in Mumbai, “almost all” had tales of sexual assault of a
policewoman by a policeman. There are no numbers to back the claim.
In cases from Delhi to
Yavatmal, from small towns in UP to Kutch, Fountain Ink found
a concerted effort on the part of police to hide the issue. No official
statistics are kept and few details of internal disciplinary action are
released.
Like any other
employer, police are duty-bound to implement their obligations under the Sexual
Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, Redressal) Act,
2013. Every district has an Internal Complaints Committee (ICI) where a
policewoman can file a complaint. There is a Central Internal Complaints
Committee (CICC) at the headquarters level as well but these committees often
exist only on paper.
There are broken,
assaulted policewomen across the country, suffocated by the male culture in the
force. They continue to don the uniform and report for duty, and enforce laws
and protect the system that failed them.
It was an unremarkable
afternoon in the summer of 1987 when constable Aradhya came across an
advertisement in Amar Ujala. The police were recruiting at a time
when a woman in khaki remained a novelty.
“I’d always been
motivated to do good. Lawyers lied, politicians cheated and so I chose the
police,” she told me.
In secret, she filled
out the form. A job in the police would be a ticket out of small-town life,
guarantee of a future unlike that of her home-bound uneducated mother. A couple
of months passed, and just as the thought of being in uniform began to slip out
of her mind, two constables came knocking on her door. Her father answered.
“Is your daughter
home?” one of them said.
“Has she done
something wrong?” her father asked.
Aradhya had been
dreading this moment. She had turned 18, the age when one thought of marriage,
not ambition. Her father was aghast. A poor farmer with a big patch of land, he
belonged to a time when a woman’s place was in the house. They definitely
didn’t wear pants and wield power. But she didn’t relent. She was recruited.
At the Shahjahanpur
Police Training School, she made a name for herself as a runner. Aside from the
mundane—filing FIRs and lodging complaints—she found herself challenged and
excelled at physical education. More often than not, she “came Number 1” in the
50-and 100-metre races.
When a policewoman musters the courage to report harassment or assault, nothing comes of it. In at least five cases that fountain ink tracked—three in maharashtra, one in odisha and one in up—the matter was hushed up or the accounts of victims were discredited.
On February 1, 1988, after completing training Aradhya graduated as a constable. When she appeared in khaki before her family, she vowed to her father to always think of her “seniors as her mother and father and the force as her family”.
Her pay was modest—Rs.
3,000 per month—but the pride with which her family and friends looked at her
was priceless. The following year her younger brother also entered the force.
A 2013 home
ministry figure states that women constitute a mere 5.33 per cent of the police
force. Of the 15,85,117 personnel working in the state police forces, only
84,479 are women. A 2014 figure released by the Bureau of Police Research and
Development (BPR&D) places the strength of police in India at 17,22,786.
The BPR&D is a consultancy under the Centre for police modernisation.
For a population of
122 crore, this is a ratio of approximately one police officer for every 708
people. Out of the 15,000 police stations across India, just 518 are all-women
police stations.
State-wise, of the 1,73,341
police personnel in UP, only 2,586 are women while in Andhra Pradesh there are
just 2,031 policewomen, 2.27 per cent of the 89,325 police personnel.
Maharashtra, Tamil
Nadu and Chandigarh have better representation, but there are only 5,356
policewomen in Delhi out of 75,169 police personnel (7.13 per cent).
In 2014, the NDA
government decided to reserve 33 per cent of seats for women in police in all
seven union territories including Delhi, a proposal that was initiated by the
previous UPA regime.
Many states have acted
on the home ministry’s advisories to adopt a reservation policy for women in
police forces. Twelve states, Maharashtra, Bihar, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu,
Odisha, Sikkim, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Tripura, Telangana, and
Uttarakhand have a reservation policy of 30 per cent or more for women in the
police.
Several constables I
spoke to cited their frustrations with the lack of promotional opportunities
and the assumption that they were unqualified or incompetent for frontline
postings. Even in the case of a crime against women, a male colleague had a
greater chance of landing the case, they said. There is a need for a
gender-neutral cadre while several female constables at Thane Jail suggested
gender sensitisation workshops for police officials who live and work in the
confines of the jail.
Given the gender bias,
it is not surprising that despite the reservations and advertising vacancies
for women constables in Andhra Pradesh between 2005-2010 quotas went unfilled.
The intake of women police in Rajasthan, Haryana and Assam did not match the
number of women in the employable category. In some states, there are simply
not enough takers for the job.
Despite the pride she
took in her uniform Aradhya remained shackled by the prejudices of society.
When she travelled between house and police station, she draped herself in a
large chunni, body and face covered. Only upon scrutiny could one
make out the khaki pants that were visible from the knee down. Still, Aradhya
found the job empowering.
It didn’t matter that
most of the time she sat behind a desk doing what her colleagues thought was
“women’s work.” She entered names in the log book and answered the phone, a job
she does even today. But policing was also an adventure.
Once a year, she would
have the opportunity to travel to different parts of the country, often on her
own. She was a member of the cross-country police bandobast team at the Kumbh
Mela in Haridwar. The massive crowds made it seem as though “almost everyone
from India” had descended onto the banks of the Ganga. The number of people,
the rush, made her town of Mainpuri seem like an isolated crater on the far
side of the moon.
One day she was assigned
VIP duty at a helipad. A flock of bureaucrats and reporters shielded themselves
in the dusty field as a chopper descended, but Aradhya stood erect. When
Mulayam Singh emerged, she was one of the policewomen who formed a protective
ring around the then Chief Minister. VIP duty placed her in front of all sorts.
When she saw Hema Malini, she was star struck. Her cousins made her recount the
incident over and over again.
“The women of India
are coming out,” she had said then. The sense of possibility was tangible as it
had never been before when she came face to face with Kiran Bedi, the
archetypal police officer, a woman who made it in a man’s world.
But for most of the
year, life was dull. She shared a room in the police barracks with her younger
brother and when she completed 15 years, she was transferred from Mainpuri to
the next town, Etawah. By now, the glamour was wearing thin and even
assignments seemed uneventful.
When she reported for
duty at the Sangam in Allahabad she kept her eyes open for criminals and VIPs,
but spent most of the day looking for the parents of a hysterical child.
“Agra, Aligarh,
Jalandhar, where didn’t I go?” she said. Despite the frequency and need for
travel, the police provided no facilities, neither transport nor accommodation.
There were no temporary barracks for the visiting force. “No woman officer was
naïve enough to assume there would be a ladies’ toilet,” she said. Her years of
service meant that she knew the drill and when she read her name on the
duty-sheet for the Jalvihar Mela in Mauranipur she was, at best, ambivalent.
In the summer of 1981,
Meeran C. Borwankar became an IPS officer. A no-nonsense woman, she climbed
through the ranks. As Mumbai’s first female chief of the Crime Branch she led a
200-man-strong team and cracked investigations into organised crime. Her
profile rose when she investigated the infamous Jalgaon sex scandal where local
politicians were accused of luring young girls with promises of jobs and loans.
“It wasn’t easy.
Thirty years ago, the number of women in police could be counted on one’s
hands. I was uncomfortable, as were the men. Back then there were just eight or
nine women in the whole district. When we were handling the Jalgaon sex
scandal, there was just one female sub-inspector and a few female constables so
we’d ask neighbouring districts to send female constables. I was apprehensive
and so was the police. Nobody was used to women in a high position. It was a
big challenge,” she said.
Years later when a
senior police officer tried to act too friendly, she was quick to slam him
down. Despite that, there was sexism. “When I became DCP Mumbai, our
commissioner asked how will you do night rounds? Men felt as though I needed
protection, but as DCP I was meant to protect people. This was patriarchy.
Sharad Pawar wasn’t comfortable giving me a district, what if something goes
wrong, they all worried? Who is there to secure you? ‘I said, I don’t need
support’.”
Borwankar is currently
on central deputation in Delhi as Director General, BPR&D. In 2015, she
penned a report on the “Gender Friendliness of the Maharashtra Police” by
interviewing women officers and constables in a varied sample set.
The report states:
“Women constables have reported grave difficulty in balancing family life with a
career in law enforcement. Police officers, both constables and sub-inspectors,
have reported that male officers do not respect female officers; instead they
keep passing remarks/taunting them.” According to the report “19.48 per cent of
women constables and 18 per cent of sub-inspectors” spoke of a lack of gender
respect in the police. Six per cent of sub-inspectors and 2.57 per cent
of constables surveyed remarked on the “morally incorrect conduct of male
officers”.
Borwankar said: “Men
in the police, especially in rural areas haven’t seen women in such challenging
jobs. They feel that women taking these jobs makes them loose women, that they
are available and they take certain liberties. Women who are coming as
constables are coming for bread and butter while women as sub-inspectors are
assertive, they come for ambition. The more women in higher roles the higher
the gender friendliness. The constable-level feel the pain and they aren’t
empowered enough to get change implemented.”
At least 1.71 per cent
of women constables said that seniors expected “physical favours” from them.
It started with an
order. Constable Aradhya had been summoned to the Captain’s (SP’s) office. He
spoke in a crisp, hurried manner. “Pack your bags, you are leaving tomorrow,” he
said.
Aradhya would travel
to Mauranipur, a sleepy town near Jhansi that woke once a year for the epic
Jalvihar Mela where deities would be taken in procession through the town and
submerged in the river Sukhnai. After the ritual, the fair would last for up to
a month. The following morning she set off, travelling 277 km from Etawah to
Jhansi on her own by train.
Aradhya had made
arrangements for accommodation as well. She would stay at an old woman’s house
whom women in the force fondly referred to as Ma.
The first thing she
did upon reaching Jhansi was register at the police station. She had one night
to settle in. The next day she took a bus to Mauranipur. When she reached,
lights were being fixed in the market place. At the station there, she entered her
police ID number in a log book and was issued instructions:
“Ensure that there is
no fighting, no rough behaviour or eve teasing.”
The first three nights
of patrol were uneventful. She met female constables from across India, ate in
the mess behind one of the stages and on the fourth night, ran into a new
recruit, class of 2011, from her district. Constable Rani and Aradhya knew of
each other and felt a sense of kinship because of their connection to Etawah.
They decided to spend
the rest of the night patrolling together.
In police parlance
there is a word for the mistreatment of women in the force. It’s simply called
“male culture”. It serves as a reminder that though being in the police allows
a certain degree of power, policewomen are prone to assault and harassment like
women in any other workplace. It is this culture that sees women as inferior,
unable to shoulder the same responsibilities as men.
Given the low
representation of women, a culture of masculinity dominates the force. In
several conversations across police stations in Mumbai, women constables
expressed their frustration at being forced to accept working alongside
colleagues who harassed them. A constable in south Mumbai said her superior had
assured her a promotion if she performed oral sex on him in the police station;
another constable in Thane who was routinely harassed by a senior considered
resignation because of “improper” phone calls late in the night. Most of the
female constables remained silent or were silenced.
When someone speaks
out they face retaliation. Constable Pawar, a fresh recruit at Thane Central
Jail, had shifted to the outskirts of Mumbai from Nagpur. She was assigned a
shared room at Shraddha Building inside the jail. Fifteen days into her new
job, where she logged the name of visitors at the control room, she and her
roommate were called to the superintendent’s office.
The superintendent sat
behind a big desk and waved a piece of paper. He claimed it was an anonymous
letter about her conduct.
“Are you conducting
illegal activities in your bedroom, entertaining policemen late at night? Is
this true or false?” he asked.
The constables were
aghast.
“False,” they said.
The superintendent
called the female officer in-charge. She assured him the women were of “good
character”. While exiting, constable Pawar requested the superintendent to
shift her from the Control Room. She was highly educated and could manage a
more challenging job. Eight days later, she got a better posting in the female
jail division.
Troubled by
allegations and rumours that had begun to spread, she asked her mother to come
and reside with her. She handed in a letter asking for a room under her name.
That evening, the superintendent called her to his chamber.
“I will give you a
room but first I want to talk to you personally,” he said. Pawar called him at
around 7 p.m. on his mobile but their conversation was cut short as he was
driving. He asked her to call back within half an hour and before the time had
lapsed, he called her. He asked her about the room application.
“If you want a room,
come meet me at Kalwa Circle,” he said. Pawar refused and hung up. A short
while later he called again, several times. She didn’t answer. When she did he
told her he was waiting at Kalwa Bridge despite there being no plans to meet.
Over the next four
days he called repeatedly. On August 2016, after being pressured, she agreed to
meet him. She asked a constable with whom she worked at the jail to accompany
her. They reached at 8 p.m. The superintendent was waiting in his personal car,
a silver Swift.
“Why have you brought
him? Have you told him you are meeting me?” he asked.
“No,” she said. It was
a lie, but she was afraid.
The superintendent
leaned over and opened the door. As he bent over, he grabbed her by the hand
and pulled her in. When she tried to leave, he wouldn’t let go of her hand.
Eventually she wrestled her way out and rushed back to her room.
Two days later, the
superintendent sent her a blank message on his mobile.
“Tell me Sir,” she
wrote at about 10:30 p.m.
“You hurt me. Till
date, no one has hurt me like you have done,” he wrote back.
He continued to
message her until about 1:30 a.m., imploring her to respond. She didn’t.
Frustrated and insecure, she filed a written complaint at the office of the IG
in Pune and the Deputy Commissioner (Western Zone). She showed them the
messages on her mobile. When word spread, other women who had been sexually
harassed by the superintendent reached out; women in Kolapur, Nasik, Amravati
and the Pune Training Centre.
In this case it wasn’t
just the facts of the case but that he was a “habitual offender” with three
previous recorded incidents of sexual misconduct. He had been issued notices,
undergone suspension but continued to remain in positions of power. After
constable Pawar’s complaint, the superintendent has been suspended and told to
vacate his bungalow on the jail premises. The case is on at Thane Magistrate’s
court. According to the new jail superintendent, Pawar’s former boss continues
to “malign her character by setting her up”.
This behaviour isn’t
unique to India. A 2012 Guardian investigation found that the
scale and extent of sexual abuse by police officers is “more widespread” than
previously believed. The investigation has among other things found “a
pervasive culture of sexism within the police service, which some claim allows
abuse behaviour to go unchecked.”
By the fourth day, the
crowd at Jalvihar Mela was bigger. After three night shifts, the cacophony, the
non-stop music and the bright lights began to grate. Aradhya was assigned near
the giant Ferris wheel where the shrieks of children and adults could be heard
over the horns tooting incessantly.
In all the chaos,
there was one constant: the gaze of a constable who had been lurking around
them for a while.
“Why is that sepoy
always looking here? Do you know him?” she asked Rani.
“Never seen him
before,” she replied. They tried to ignore him.
As the night
progressed, so did the sepoy’s boldness. He kept circling the two constables
and walking closely behind him was another constable. When he walked close
enough for the first time, the first thing Aradhya did was read the name tag:
Vijay. The patches on his shoulder indicated that he was of the same rank as
she. The other constable had no badge, a violation of the rules. At a safe
distance was a shorter man with a handkerchief tied around his face.
“He looked as though
he didn’t want to be recognised,” she said.
It was hard to get
work done because of constable Vijay’s advances. But they continued to patrol
and paused not far from the Ferris wheel where a commotion could be heard. As
they approached, they could hear Bollywood item numbers blasting from a sound
system. Two women gyrated to the beat. As men in the audience whistled and
howled, the women in ghagra-choli thumped their breasts,
bodies writhing, hips thrusting. Concerned about the safety of the dancers
Aradhya pushed ahead but was relieved when she saw a man in white walking
around the stage, quietening the men in the audience. In a bid to get to the
front, one man had pushed another and a small scuffle had broken out. Despite
this the constables carried on, leaving the women to sway together, arms
intertwined.
“This was no place for
a woman,” she said.
About half an hour
later, Vijay and the other constable walked over.
“What is your ID
number?” he asked.
Aradhya and Rani
responded. They didn’t think to ask him why he wanted it. He spoke in a rushed,
authoritarian manner despite being junior to Aradhya.
“I know the SO
(Station Officer) in Jhansi. You are being called to the police station. Come
with us,” he said.
She asked for more
details but he simply urged them to make their way to Jhansi. By now, both
women were irritated and uncertain.
There was no reason to
disbelieve a colleague but his behaviour all night had been questionable. There
was no transport so Vijay offered a ride. He told them he would be travelling
between the two points and would be happy to ferry them back and forth for the
remainder of the fair.
“He pointed to his
white jeep,” she says.
By now, the number of
drunks on the streets had increased substantially. Men walked into the
policewomen routinely but this was the norm at all melas for all policewomen.
“Are you going to
disobey orders from a senior?” he asked.
The policewomen looked
at each other and him in silence.
“My jeep is empty and
I am leaving for Jhansi now. Your SO has called you, are you coming?” he asked
with force.
The policewomen walked
to the toilet behind Mauranipur Police Station. Vijay tailed them and convinced
them to get into his jeep. Rani sat in the front next to the man with the
handkerchief wrapped around his face. Aradhya sat in the back sandwiched between
Vijay and the constable without a name tag. The jeep had barely travelled 50
metres when Vijay offered Aradhya a “cold drink.” She took a few sips.
As the car pulled away
from Mauranipur leaving the fair Vijay began talking boisterously.
“Should we have some
fun?” he asked.
On January 6, 2015, a
constable in Kakatpur, Puri, was raped by the inspector-in-charge while she was
on night duty at the police station. The incident happened in the inspector’s
chamber where he had summoned her. When the constable sought to complain,
members of the force tried to silence her. Following an investigation, the
inspector was booked for rape. When I spoke to the senior who had investigated
the matter he said:
“The inspector has
served time behind bars.”
How long? I asked.
“Fifteen days,” he
responded.
Later in 2015, a constable with the Wadgaon Jungle police station lodged a complaint of sexual harassment and molestation by an inspector. In May 2016, a female sub-inspector in Kutch East filed a complaint that the Kutch East police superintendent raped her and then forced her to have an abortion.
“Why do you want to
rake up old issues?” asked a senior Inspector in Kutch while refusing to say
anything on the case.
All the cases
mentioned above failed to yield the seven-year punishment attached to the
offence. The cases died unremarkable deaths.
“What are you doing?”
Aradhya asked when he slid his arm around her shoulder and unfastened her clip.
“Cunt,” he barked at
her.
He then unbuttoned her
khaki pants and when she protested, he dug the mouth of his revolver into her
skull. She remained silent until he fingered her, revolver held loosely against
her temple.
“Motherfucker, I’ll
show you what I can do,” he cursed. By now the cold drink he had offered her
made her feel woozy. He waved his revolver around and she cautioned: “No need
to shoot anyone.”
After he had raped
her, he called his friend. “Bhaiya, your turn,” he said. She lay in a
foetal position on the ground next to a tree. Then the other cop raped Aradhya.
Then it was the driver’s turn.
“If only I were a
man,” she told me and paused. “If only I were a richer woman. If only this
weren’t a lawless land.”
Once the driver had
raped her, the three men assembled.
“What should we do with
her?” constable Vijay asked the others.
She began pleading.
“Spare me,” she said.
“Should we kill her
and throw her in the river?” Vijay asked.
She pleaded for her
life.
The three men nudged
her towards the car. They continued this discussion inside the jeep. Constable
Rani who had remained silent for much of the ordeal finally spoke up.
“Just drop us at the
Jhansi police lines behind the State Bank,” she said.
It was then Vijay
issued his threat: “I will take you by your chunni and
strangle you and hang you if you utter a word of this to anyone.”
Constable Rani, a
married woman, stayed quiet. She had too much to lose. Aradhya felt as though
she would faint. They drove in silence until she could see the lights of
Jhansi. When the car pulled into police lines, Aradhya began praying.
“Prabhu, help,” she
repeated again and again.
When the car stopped,
Rani got out and Aradhya jumped from the back seat and ran as fast as she could
behind Rani. When they reached the room Rani was staying at, they didn’t speak
about what had happened. Rani put out a mat on the floor for Aradhya to lie
down. A couple of hours later, the mat was covered in blood.
The following morning,
she returned to Mauranipur and met another constable from Etawah. When she
narrated the events to him, he was horrified but helpless. She met the captain
and excused herself from duty by saying she needed to return for her
“grandmother’s operation”. It was a lie but she was in no condition to work.
She didn’t dare tell
the captain what had happened. Vijay’s threats had struck home.
“You should have
called 100 right there and then,” Ma said.
She hadn’t stopped
crying.
“How many girls? How
many rapes?” she asked me.
She vowed to herself
that she wouldn’t be silenced. What followed were a series of meetings where
she recounted the incident. She made notes so that she would remain coherent,
so that not even the tiniest detail would be under-reported or misstated. She
filled out enough FIRs to know just how cases got botched, how many rapes went
unreported.
She first stood in
front of IG Kanpur Nagar. He listened in silence. He seldom made eye contact
and she did her best not to cry. Often, she couldn’t hold back tears.
After him, she stood
in front of SSP Etawah, Manzil Saini, the super cop with a physics degree from
St. Stephen’s College. She spoke softly as though it were a dirty secret she
was sharing. Aradhya was then directed to the Mahila Police Station where
Vinita Sarthi, an inspector, wrote the FIR.
Sarthi will never
forget the way Aradhya cried. She will never forget the conversation that
didn’t make it to the FIR.
Aradhya wiped her
tears with a red chunni. She said: “When I see a male constable, I
see my brother but that night, that man did not see me as a sister. He didn’t
even see me as an equal. He fingered me. He pulled my pants and threw me on the
ground. He fucked me. And then invited two others to do so. Tell me, am I
wrong? It is my fault? How do I get justice? Should I send my brothers after
him to kill them all? What will that do? Break my family even more? Why is that
man still in uniform and not behind bars in jail? Where is the law?
“I wanted to help her.
She was one of us. I did everything I could but something happened in Lucknow,”
Sarthi told me over the phone.
“Something like what?”
I asked.
“The case got buried,”
she said.
The case got buried
despite the fact that Aradhya was so badly assualted that she spent 15 days in
a hospital. It was forgotten despite her recounting the incident before a
magistrate even when she had been too afraid to travel to Jhansi alone because
of constable Vijay. Her cry for justice didn’t even reach the pile of letters
placed in front of Akhilesh Yadav, the chief minister. In her letter to the
chief minister she recounted the events of the night, and said she suspected
constable Rani of being involved in the plan. She said the perpetrators were
being protected by the police department, and that she was receiving death
threats.
But nobody in Etawah
forgot, nor in Jhansi. When the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) heard
of the brutality, they called for a report. A departmental enquiry was
conducted and a report by the SSP Jhansi claimed: “On preliminary
investigation, no evidence could be found of any crime committed upon the
complainant. Hence final report Number 26, dated 12/4/2016 saw the submission
of a cancellation of the FIR. It is pending cancellation before the court,”
said a spokesperson of the NHRC.
The NHRC has not
accepted the report of the SSP. They would like to know whether a medical
examination was conducted. The commission also desired the entire record of the
case file as well as witness and victim statements and the FIR. “The case is
not closed at the NHRC,” he said.
An IG in Lucknow with
access to the case and the findings from the departmental enquiry stated that
several reasons were given to discredit Aradhya’s account.
The first was that she
was unable to decipher the exact location of the incident, which weighed
against her. The second was that she reported the case in Etawah when the
incident occurred in Jhansi. The third was that she waited for a few days
before a medical and was therefore found to be not substantially harmed. The
fourth and crucial reason was that constable’s Rani’s testimony as witness
didn’t back up Aradhya’s claims. “She simply denied anything wrong had
happened,” the IG said. The final reason was that she was “having an affair
with a cook” which meant she was of “loose character” anyway.
Constable Aradhya
isn’t the only woman in the police who has been sexually abused, molested or
raped by members of the police force.
“I won’t be the last,”
she said.
Postscript:
Constable Kavita
has been off duty from Sewri police station for the past few months. Though the
inspector in-charge claims she is suffering from TB, her husband says she is
distraught and struggles to come to terms with what happened to her.
Constable Pawar has
been a victim of sting operations conducted by the accused ex-superintendent of
Thane Jail. He claims she is receiving bribes in order to allow mobiles into
the prison, an allegation she denies. The case is in court and a departmental
enquiry is underway.
The Investigating
Officer in Puri had almost forgotten about the case. “He’s done his time in
jail, why should he be there for more than 15 days,” he said. The Dalit girl
continues to come to work.
Constable Aradhya
continues to work, but can’t get ver the trauma. “My life is ruined,” she said.
(Aradhya, Kavita, and Pawar are not their real names.)
(Published in the March 2017 edition of Fountain Ink.)