Rape Victims: Bilkis Bano Vs. Kashmiri Pandit Women-Valued Sample Vs an Outlier: Lalit K Kaul

 

Rape Victims: Bilkis Bano Vs. Kashmiri Pandit Women-Valued Sample Vs an Outlier

Lalit K Kaul

 Ms. Bilkis Bano has been made into an international figure by reporting about her misfortune and barbarism inflicted upon her (gang raped in May 2002) by anti-social elements with a specific aim of denigrating the non-existent yet highly publicized “Hindu Nationalist Government” of “Hindu Nationalist Party”. This classification of the Government of India (GoI) by Pak’s leadership and media is/was based on the public statements, of leaders like Asaddudin Owaisi, the Muslim religious heads, the Abdullahs, the Muftis, the Kejriwals, et al, intended to communicate to the world that the Muslims are not only being discriminated against, but are also unsafe in “Hindu” India. Therefore, when Pakistani political leadership and political analysts 24x7 talk about how human rights of Kashmiri Muslims and of Muslims in general are being violated by the UT government and security forces combine, and Indian government, no Muslim leader worth the salt in India counters the fabricated charge by calling a press conference; the reason being that such narratives from across the border are based upon the inputs from the Indian Muslim political and religious leadership and their Half Muslim brethren.

Rapes /Gang rapes:

Gang rapes of girls and women in our country are not uncommon and are truly secular in nature as the rapists transcend all religious barriers. The gang rape of “Dalit” women by “Meem”-despite the so called “Bhim Meem” alliance; of college/school going girls and of women by such rapists used to be news, but now it’s not reported in the media, as it used to be until a few years ago; either media has given up on it for its frequency of occurrence or Indian society has suddenly become too civilized to countenance such barbaric acts. It’s not known how many such culprits as involved in such heinous crimes were brought to justice by an ever sluggish and inertia loaded police and judiciary combine; not to underestimate the role of politicians in protecting their cultivated goons from being brought to justice. All such victims can't be Bilkis Bano and nor can their trauma be at par with her in “Hindu Nationalist Government“ in Gujarat to receive as much media coverage as she did, prompted and supported by so called Human Rights organizations.

Was Bilkis Bano denied justice?

Eleven men who were sentenced to life imprisonment in the Bilkis Bano gang rape case of 2002 were released from Godhra sub-jail on Monday (August 15, 2022) after a panel set up by the Gujarat government approved their application for remission of the sentence. Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Raj Kumar said the remission application was considered because the convicts had completed 14 years in jail, and factors such as “age, nature of the crime, behaviour in prison and so on”.

The above position of law- on matters as inhuman and barbaric as rape of girls/women; the crime done against women and girls that leaves indelible marks of trauma on their body, mind and soul and also in a male dominated society these unfortunate women/girls get stigmatized and in that too the unmarried ones are apportioned blame for their tragedy ironically enough by the females in their society- is certainly not beyond reproach because “age & behaviour in prison" can't be among the factors influencing the quantum of punishment, much less decreasing the span of sentence as originally decreed. Rape is a wilful act which is pre-planned and pre-meditated in conditions of riot and otherwise. Therefore, for a criminal act done with full application of mind the quantum and type of punishment can't be influenced by factors like age, good behaviour, etcetera.

It may be plausible to say that at the end of the day the justice Bilkis Bano deserved was derailed by releasing the convicts on basis of their age and behaviour in the prison!

What about Kashmiri Pandit Women and Girls?

There is no grudging the kind of attention Ms Bilkis Bano received and continued to receive for her gang rape, since the year 2002, but one would like to believe, that in a “secular and democratic” India a type of crime done against any Indian citizen would attract same punishment at different points of time irrespective of the perpetrators’ affiliations. But Kashmiri Pandit (KP) women and girls have been classified as “outliers” in the database of Indian society for the rapes/ gang rapes and murders they were subjected to, starting 1988 by those who professed to be in the “Way of Allah” for realizing cessation of Kashmir Valley from “Kafir” India. A few instances (from among many) of barbarism inflicted by them upon the KP women and girls are reproduced from the documented history as under:

Ref: Atrocities on women and children: Kashmiri Pandit Network.

Date: 19.4.90  Place: Hazratbal, Srinagar

Miss Sarla Bhatt, a Stuff Nurse in Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Srinagar was kidnapped from the Hostel of the Institute on April 14, 1990, by a group of JKLF militants. Her dead body with bullet wounds was later found on April 19, in the downtown area of Srinagar. The post mortem report concluded that she was raped many times before she was killed.

Date: 22.4.90 Place: Srinagar

Sushma Pandit was abducted from the roadside by the terrorists. She was raped and  released the next day with bullet wounds on her legs.

Date: 13.8.90 Place: Sopore, Baramullah

Babli Raina, a teacher in the Education Department, was gang raped in her house in the presence of her family and then killed.

Date: 4.6.90  Place: Trehgam, Kupwara

Girja Tikoo working as a Laboratory Assistant at Government Girls High School, Trehgam, was abducted, gang raped for many days and shred into pieces on a bar and saw mill.

In May 1990, in Shopian, Brij Nath Kaul, his wife Ratna and sister Sunita were abducted. The women were stripped and molested and later raped, Brij Nath Kaul was clubbed to death. The women's fate was even more gruesome: they were done to death by being dragged behind a jeep.

Date: 8.8.91 Place: Karfoli Mohallah, Srinagar

A Hindu lady Asha Kaul was abducted from Achabal, Anantnag, her native village. She was gang raped and tortured in a deserted Hindu house and the dead body was abandoned there. The decomposed body was later recovered.

Date: 30.3.92 Place: Naisarak, Srinagar

Terrorists intruded into the house of one Sohan Lal Braroo and shot him dead during the night. They gang raped his wife Bimla and young daughter Archana. Archana succumbed during the gang rape itself and Bimla who was shot after being raped, died in hospital.

No steps have been taken to bring culprits to justice? Why? Because KP community has been declared-through a national level political consensus- as an outlier. The SC of India has put its final stamp on this outlier classification by refusing to admit petitions filed by the KP organization(s) seeking bringing to justice their tormentors who had engineered their genocide.

What are outliers?

In statistics, an outlier is a data point that differs significantly from other observations. An outlier may be due to a variability in the measurement, an indication of novel data, or it may be the result of experimental error; the latter are sometimes excluded from the data set.

The KP community has been labelled as the outcome of “experimental error” and therefore an outlier irrelevant to the Indian data-set comprising much touted pluralistic society. And, that’s the reason why no “Human Rights” organizations in India took up their case; there was no media debate to push for bringing their culprits to justice; no initiation of legal proceedings against the identified culprits, and, above all, no political or religious heads of any standing condemned such barbaric acts in public. Instead, the leaders of the perpetrators of such crimes were invited to be the honoured State guests by the PMs of India belonging to all political outfits and their conglomerates.

The Contrast: What’s its Unambiguous Message?

One sees a contrast between the response of various agencies to the respective tragedies of Bilkis Bano and KP women/girls and the message it conveys is that for KP community human dignity and Right to life are dispensable/disposable commodities.

Bilkis Bano was raped by “Hindus” in a state ruled by “Hindu Nationalist Party” while NDA led by Sri Vajpayee ruled at the Centre and therefore it had to be sensationalized to bring to disrepute the governance of “communalistic” political outfit as it suited Mandal politics; whereas KP women and girls had been raped by Muslims and to demand their prosecution wouldn’t have suited it because in Mandal politics the most sought after enchantress is Muslim community. Thereafter, BJP became wiser to fall in line with Mandal politics and Modiji’s government didn’t find it politically correct to bring to justice rapists of KP women.

By not bringing the culprits in rape cases of KP women to justice the Indian Constitution remains grossly violated while Islamic barbarism is sanctified.