Some people in a cheering crowd called for her to be raped. Many were women
Her hair was cut off and her face painted black before she was paraded into the street where some people in a cheering crowd called for her to be raped.
But
perhaps the most shocking aspect of the attack in a Delhi neighborhood
last month is that video shared on social media shows that most of the
baying mob were women.
At
least 12 people have been arrested by the Delhi police, eight of whom
are women. Two are minors. Police have not brought charges over the
incident, but they say the 20-year-old victim of the January 26 attack
was abducted and physically and sexually assaulted.
The
alleged involvement of women has touched a nerve in a country that has
long struggled to address gender violence. Activists say the case
demonstrates the scale of internalized misogyny in India, where women
are taught to uphold patriarchal structures. They fear violence against
women will worsen as support grows for right-wing extremist political
groups that foster traditional, patriarchal values.
Swati Maliwal, the chairperson of the Delhi Commission of Women, said the woman told her she'd been raped by three men.
"There
were women present (in the room)...instigating the men to be more
brutal with her," Maliwal told CNN, recounting what the victim had told
her.
"When
I saw that video and I saw these women attacking this girl...it just
makes you feel so angry and sad that you have such women who can do
something like that."
It
is unclear if any of the people captured on video in the crowd are
involved in the alleged assault or have been booked by police.
The victim's sister watched part of the attack unfold but was powerless to stop it.
"I
was thinking of shouting, of telling someone, but the (accused) women
grabbed me, saying they would beat me up," said the 18-year-old, who CNN
is calling Aarti to protect her sister's identity as Indian law
prohibits revealing the identity of rape victims.
Aarti
told CNN her sister -- who is married -- was attacked by the relatives
of a teenage boy, who they say killed himself after her sister spurned
his advances. CNN has attempted to contact representatives for the
alleged offenders though it is not clear if they have lawyers.
"They (alleged perpetrators) blamed her, but she didn't do anything," Aarti said. "I never thought they would go this far."
The attack
On
the morning of January 26, Aarti told CNN she delivered a bag of wheat
to her sister's house in the eastern Delhi's Shahdara district.
But when her sister came downstairs to collect it, an angry mob rushed in.
"They
started hitting and beating my sister. This was happening in front of
me, but I just stood there, I didn't know what to do...I was frozen with
fear," Aarti said.
The
teenager does not remember how many people there were, only that there
were "a lot of them" and they included men and women from another local
family.
Aarti
said the group tried to snatch her sister's two-and-a-half-year-old
son, but Aarti "somehow fought them off" and held onto him as the group
bundled her sister in an autorickshaw.
Clutching
her nephew, she followed them in another rickshaw, accompanied by two
of the alleged perpetrators to the residential Kasturba Nagar area of
Delhi less than two miles away -- where the alleged perpetrators live
near the house Aarti shares with her father.
Kasturba
Nagar is a low to middle-income neighborhood in Delhi where women sit
and chat outside brightly painted homes and men cluster around local tea
shops. On the day of the attack people were off work to mark Republic
Day, the anniversary of the day India's constitution was adopted -- but
the day has taken on new significance for Aarti and her family.
The
rickshaw stopped at the alleged perpetrators' house, but as Aarti
couldn't see her sister, she went inside her own home and latched the
door.
Soon
after, she heard commotion outside, and from behind a wall watched her
sister being led through the street as women hit her with rods.
Her
hair had been cut off, her face blackened, and she had a garland of
slippers around her neck -- all actions meant to mark her as perhaps
deserving of public shame.
Aarti
said the women took her sister around the neighborhood, shoving,
slapping and beating her sister for at least half an hour.
"I couldn't believe no one in the neighborhood spoke up or tried to help, they only cheered," said Aarti.
Aarti said she called police on a borrowed cellphone and they arrived 15 minutes later.
At
the police station, Aarti's sister told her she had been locked in a
room where a "wrong was done to her" -- a colloquial phrase in India
referring to sexual assault -- before being paraded in the street.
R
Sathiyasundaram, the deputy police commissioner of Shahdara district,
said the investigation is still underway and would not say which laws
the alleged perpetrators had been arrested under.
He declined to confirm the nature of the sexual assault, or confirm details of the incident.
"We cannot reveal all that, it's a matter of investigation," he said.
Internalized misogyny
Though
many Indians were shocked that women would allegedly incite rape,
others say it's not surprising in a country with strong patriarchal
values.
Ten years ago, lawyer Seema Kushwaha represented "Nirbhaya,"
a 23-year-old student who died after being gang-raped on a Delhi bus in
2012. Outrage led to stronger rape laws, but activists say those have
had little impact in stemming the level of sexual violence in India,
which was ranked the most dangerous place in the world to be a woman in a 2018 Thompson Reuters Foundation survey of experts on women's issues.
Kushwaha says the problem persists because of societal issues -- and those are harder to change.
She
says in patriarchal societies women are taught that they're ultimately
to blame for any wrongdoing -- and last month, those deep beliefs played
out on the streets of Delhi, when women allegedly ganged up on one of
their own.
"If
fighting crimes against women is a fight of the female gender, women
should have supported the girl ... but they did not do that, they
instead beat her up because it has been ingrained in them that whatever
men do, it is women who are responsible," she said.
In
families, mothers-in-law often curtail the freedoms of a new bride. In
public, it is often women who police other women's actions or way of
dressing.
The
attack in Shahdara is an extreme iteration of that, Kushwaha said,
where women allegedly resorted to cruelty against another woman to
avenge the alleged suicide of a teenage boy.
According
to data from India's National Crime Records Bureau, crimes against
women were 20% higher in 2020 compared to 2013 -- the last year before
the ruling Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) came to power -- and the latest
figures from 2020. However, those statistics likely don't capture the
whole picture -- as in other countries, rape is often underreported, and
an increase in reported rapes could reflect a growing awareness about
reporting sexual violence.
Kushwaha
-- who has recently been appointed the spokesperson of Bahujan Samaj
Party (BSP) which was formed to represent caste minorities -- says that
while no government can be singularly blamed for the violence against
women in India, the rise of right-wing ideologies in the country
threatens women's safety and security.
CNN
has reached out to the Indian government's Ministry of Women and Child
Development for comment about the rising number of attacks on women but
has not received a response.
In
a statement to the upper house of parliament last February, the
Ministry of Women and Child development said a number of initiatives had
been taken by the central government to address women's safety, such as
strengthening legislation. But it added that state governments are
responsible for law and order and safety of citizens. However, police in
the national capital territory of Delhi reports to the central
government.
Aarti
said this was not the first time the alleged perpetrators had targeted
her sister. They had been harassing them for weeks, showing up to their
homes and hurling abuse off and on since the boy's suicide in November,
she said.
A
week before the attack Aarti said she filed a police complaint against
the alleged perpetrators after they allegedly set fire to her father's
autorickshaw, which he rented out for income because he is paralyzed.
When asked to comment on the complaint, deputy police commissioner Sathiyasundaram did not respond.
Sathiyasundaram
also declined to share any information on the alleged perpetrators'
motive for committing the crime, saying that it was "under
investigation."
Pragya
Lodha, a clinical psychologist with MINDS Foundation, a mental health
non-profit, said if it was true that the woman was attacked because of
the teenage boy's suicide, it reflects the lack of awareness about
mental health in India.
"There is no direct cause and effect when it comes to suicide...it is rare that mere rejection has led to suicide," she said.
While Lodha said attitudes around mental health are shifting in India, especially over the last two years of the pandemic,
there is still a vast gap between the privileged classes of society
that have access to mental health and the vast rural and semi-urban
masses that do not.
Lodha
said even in major cities like Delhi access to mental health services
can seem unaffordable, and a stigma remains around mental health issues.
The way forward
Delhi authorities have indicated they want the case resolved quickly.
Delhi
police have set up a 10-member special investigative team and Delhi's
chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said the government will hire the victim a
"good lawyer" and fast-track the case.
"That's
a start but a lot more needs to be done...I'm going to be keeping a tab
on this case because I want that the investigation to be completed in a
very short span of time," Delhi Commission of Women's Maliwal said. She
said a prompt investigation would spare the victim more pain.
A
fast resolution would be a stark contrast to the majority of rape case
in India. According to Kushwaha, the lawyer, it often takes a year or
more for rape complaints to be registered and investigated, despite
Indian law requiring rape case investigations to be completed within two
months.
Cases
can take years to go through court, and many alleged perpetrators are
out on bail while they wait for the result -- sending the message that
the law can't do anything to stop them, according to Kushwaha.
And
even after all that, fewer than half of rape complaints that make it to
trial lead to a conviction. For example, in 2020 only four in 10 cases
ended in a guilty verdict, according to the latest statistics from the
National Crime Records Bureau.
"Even when convictions happen, they happen in 10 to 15 years," said Kushwaha, the lawyer.
Maliwal, from the Delhi Commission of Women, says part of the problem is the lack of fast-track courts to deal with rape cases.
In
2019, the central government approved a plan to open 1,023 fast track
courts across India to help clear a backlog of rape cases and sexual
offences against minors.
However,
according to data submitted by the minister of Law and Justice in the
upper house of parliament in December 2021, only 681 such courts had
been established.
Apart
from law, there also needs to be a focus on education, with children in
all schools having access to sex education and gender studies, said
Kushwaha. Violence against women will only abate if India's patriarchal
culture changes to create a more equal society, she added.
For
more than a week, police have been guarding both ends of the street
where the attack took place. People slow down as they pass and attempt
to peer in.
Aarti
is still living at her family home, yards from the house where her
sister was attacked, on the same street where she was paraded and
mocked.
"I'm not going anywhere; I can't afford to," said Aarti.
No comments