MUMBAI, India — A poor girl in northern India is a member of the lowest caste. She winds up in jail after fleeing her alleged rapists. These alleged rapists are powerful men.
What are the odds the story gets better from here?
Slim, to say the least.
“Here child marriage is rampant, abuse of minor girls is rampant, abductions are very frequent,” said Tapas Kumar Chakraborty, a community volunteer and journalist in Uttar Pradesh, where the girl lives. “The powerful men and the gangsters get away with everything.”
And yet, the story of this girl appears to be an exception — at least so far.
Months after losing her mother, this teenage girl living in Banda, Uttar Pradesh, was abducted. The girl’s father, a farm laborer, pleaded with a state assemblyman to help him find his daughter. The legislator helped rescue the girl and then offered to let her live with him as his domestic help. The father agreed.
“He thought she would be safe there,” said Chakraborty. “But that didn’t happen unfortunately.”
The legislator, Purshottam Naresh Dwivedi, and three other men allegedly raped and beat the 17-year-old repeatedly. The girl tried to flee, but she was caught, beaten, accused of theft and handed over to the police, according to news reports. The girl, a minor, spent a month in jail.
It is not uncommon for powerful men who sexually assault or exploit women in India to use their money or political connections to shield themselves from legal consequences.
“This is one such reported case. There are many, many, many such unreported cases,” said Amitabh Kumbar of the Centre for Social Research. “Exploitation of poor women by politicians is a common trait not just in UP [Uttar Pradesh] but across the country.”
But thanks to a combination of factors connected to her own personality, an active civil society and political games in her state, the girl has not only been freed from jail, but the politician and other accused men have been arrested. Rahul Gandhi, the Congress Party’s general secretary and heir apparent as prime minister, traveled to Uttar Pradesh on Monday and met with the girl at her village.
In a place like Banda, there is usually little chance that a poor girl will manage to get out of jail or that authorities will arrest powerful men.
Why has this case turned out differently?
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