Justice for Asifa : Can Rape Ever Be Justified?

I begin writing about this ghastly incident, with a very heavy heart. Yesterday, my day started with a Facebook post shared by a friend which read – “The Gory Details of the Khatua gang-rape shows that the India we live in is NOT really shining.” Going through the gruesome details mentioned in the post, I drew a deep shuddering breath. The grim news of the gang-rape and murder of an 8 year-old girl was described with such horrific details that the basic faith on humanity inside me, actually made me question the article – “Is this news authentic?” The details mentioned in the post, seemed too heinous to be true. Should I finally stop having even an iota of faith in humanity now?

Soon enough, my worst fears came true. Now that I have finally mustered courage to write about this, the  topmost trend on Twitter India is – #JusticeforAsifa (The rape and murder of a little girl has sparked outrage in India). In a frantic attempt to learn about any news of the 8-year old child’s survival, I have gone through almost 100 articles and videos on this incident in the last 5 hours. I wish I could find any such news. I am deeply appalled!

On January 10, 2018, an 8-year old girl went missing in Kathua near Jammu. Then, the girl’s body was recovered seven days later on January 17, 2018. The young child, Asifa Bano had been found gang-raped and murdered. The irony is – this news has started doing the rounds in social media only recently, i.e almost 3 months after the actual incident. That makes me wonder if a heinous crime such as rape, commands more coverage and spotlight only when it is in Delhi, NOT Jammu & Kashmir. Rape is RAPE, after all. It is a heinous crime and should be condemned with immediate action and severe punishment by judiciary. But WAIT – this is India and any such incident has to first get its due weightage by unnecessary propaganda on a political, social and communal (in this case) level.

The highlights on Twitter Moments tonight stated –

An 8-year-old girl was brutally raped and murdered in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir in January this year. The incident sparked violent protests in the area as the men arrested for the crime are Hindu, and the child belonged to a nomadic community of Muslim shepherds.

My blood boils at the sight of two specific words in the above statement – ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’. Hats off to those people who are actually conducting protests in the area, to support the accused! I’m ashamed to be a part of a country where people are so blinded by religion that they actually fail to see the agony of the parents of an 8-year old child, who was brutally gang-raped and murdered. My heart shudders to even imagine what an 8-year old must have gone through, while she was held captive, repeatedly gang-raped for days, kept on sedatives and then brutally murdered. Did the child even have any life left in her body, when she was murdered?

According to IndiaTimes –

“It was about land,” said Talib Hussain, a tribal rights activist and lawyer. He was also arrested & threatened by the Police for protesting in favour of Asifa’s family.

Nothing on this earth, can ever justify rape. Has it become so normal to rape and kill for land? The arrested men told investigators that their motive was to drive Asifa’s nomadic community out of the area. According to New York Times, India is in the midst of religious tensions against the backdrop of this rape incident. 

All the leading news channels’ prime time is filled with political accusations. Hindu nationalists have turned it into a rallying cry — strangely, not calling for justice for Asifa, but rushing to the defense of the accused. These protests have been triggered because all of the arrested men are Hindu, and Asifa’s nomadic people, the Bakarwals, are Muslim. I still can’t believe that a mob of lawyers (who blocked the entrance when police reached the court premises to file a chargesheet) actually used our National Flag to defend the rapists. This has even taken a political turn and almost turned into a battle between two powerful political parties of the country. An innocent child’s gang-rape and murder, bribery of local policemen, a botched-up investigation, a political and communal propaganda – What a tale of depravity in my country!

Another aspect which agitates me to the core is the involvement of a so-called ‘juvenile’ in these rape cases. The accused in this case includes 8 men, out of which 1 is a retired government official, 4 police officers and a ‘juvenile’. In the multiple articles that I have gone through since morning, each person’s name in the accused list is explicitly mentioned, EXCEPT the juvenile’s. Hats off to the laws of our land, which allows an accused juvenile to enjoy his right to privacy! When a juvenile commits a crime which definitely does NOT qualify as a child’s act, then why is he still treated as a child? Did we not learn our lesson from the last Nirbhaya rape incident in 2012?

Collectively, as a society, we seem to have failed miserably. I feel numb as I’m about to end this article. As a woman citizen of this country, I feel terribly unsafe and deeply frustrated at the sorry state of affairs in my nation. I have countless questions which still remain unanswered –

• Has religion taken precedence over humanity now?
• Does religion actually make people blind to the realities of a dastardly crime?
• As a society, have we really stooped so low that committing a heinous crime like rape has become a casual solution for land-related disputes?
• Have we become a country which is so morally deprived that we begin to politicise an immoral crime like rape?
• When can this country’s judiciary treat rape as an unforgivable crime and the perpetrators as criminals irrespective of age?
• Will India ever become a safe haven for kids, girls and women? 

With a heavy heart, I sign off with a faint glimmer of hope that every cloud has a silver lining perhaps. Maybe, someday India will really shine!