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INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY
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DO WE REMEMBER USHA & CHANDRAPATI !
Many organisations in India, some non-government, some government, are still observing and celebrating International Women’s Day. International Women’s Day came and went into history as just another day on 8th March. Speeches were made, and rallies by girl students organised, some women honoured and then it was another passing show, until the 8th March, the following year. When we talk about Women’s International Day in India, we end up mostly talking about the political representation of women in legislatures and parliament, which is abysmally low, despite convenient liberal rhetorics. Then we see the images of political and influential who’s who in the electronic media. But this 24x7 electronics media, who make or mar people in their misplaced hype, never had much of time for glamourless and faceless grass root women, who have quietly influenced course of events and have in the process, left a trail of footprints on the shifting sands of time.
One such person is Usha Narayane. Many would scratch their head as to who this Usha is? She is unfortunately recognised by the world around her as a Dalit. Surely she had no roll in being classified as one. She grew up in a slum called Kasturba Nagar in Nagpur. She is unmarried and reportedly preferring to work and study. People of the slum had high hopes in her personal progress. She is a diploma holder in Hotel Management and was working for a call-centre. In fact she was about to embark on a life changing journey. But alas, that was not to be. Thanks for the civil society indifferene to the problems of have nots and the repressive police which is unduly hard and harsh on poor and vulnerable.
Also living in the vicinity was Bharath alias Akku Yadav in his thirties. A notorious goon, who lived on his own terms, terrorising the slum people. Residents of Kasturba Nagar reportedly stated that he murdered at least three persons and dumped their bodies on railway tracks. They had reported his crimes to the police dozens of times. Each time he was arrested, he was released on bail.
But reportedly, it was rape that this Akku used, to break the morale and humiliate the residents of the colony. A rape victim lives in every other house in the slum, stated residents of Kasturba Nagar. According to reports, he violated women to control men, ordering his henchmen to drag even girls as young as 12 to a nearby old building to gang rape them.
He and his gang of thugs were a terror to some 300 families of Kasturba Nagar for over a decade, barging into their homes at will, shouting threats, demanding money and sex. Dozens of this Akku’s victims reported the crime to the police. But he was never charged with rape. Instead, the women of slum say, the police would inform Akku about who complained against him and he would come after them with vengeance. According to residents, the report informs that the police were hand-in-glove with him. He reportedly used to feed police officers with bribes and drinks and in turn they protected him.
Stories were, that police would turn the case against the complainants saying that “you are a loose woman hence he raped you”, or that “you are having affair with him” and would send them away.
Akku Yadav, who started as a petty criminal graduated as a robber and murderer, indulged freely in extortion and rape for years on. He had 24 cases of murder, dacoity, robbery and extortion tell the police, ‘but no case of rape’. The residents of Kasturba Nagar slum are vociferous in their disagreement and claim that there were at least 20 cases where families of victims have left the colony to live outside.
Thus it was a life of helplessness for these women of Kasturba Nagar with nobody to rescue them from the abyss of this blind ally.
Of course the slum dwellers looked at Usha as their rallying point, because of her education and no-nonsense approach to their problems but she was woman too. That’s how Akku Yadav once dared to take her on. Sometime around end of July 2004, he comes calling and threatens her that he would throw acid on her and rape her. He targeted her because she was outspoken and with her lawyer brother-in-law had stood up to him on some occasions. Usha had reportedly stated that “He attacked only the poor, who wouldn’t have the courage to go to police to inform, and even if they go, he knew police wouldn’t listen to them. But he made a mistake of threatening me. Female residents of the colony felt that if I was attacked, no woman would ever be safe.”
Thus started the talk-how to take on this rowdy Akku. Sensing the development, he disappeared. Usha and her lawyer Brother-In-law approached the Deputy Commissioner bypassing the local police officers, he reportedly provided a house for them and promised to look for the brigand.
On Aug. 6, 2004, hundreds of residents smashed his empty house to rubble. On the same evening they reportedly learnt that Akku Yadav had ‘surrendered’ and was in police custody. For the safety of the goon, it was an arrangement between him and the police, claimed Usha.
By now the atmosphere within the Kasturba Nagar colony was getting charged. They didn’t want to die everyday. They decided to act to-gether and act decisively, come what may.
The next day he was due to appear at the city’s district court and 500 slum residents reportedly gathered. As Yadav arrived one of his henchmen tried to pass him a knife wrapped in a blanket under the very nose of the police. After the women protested, the accomplice was arrested and Yadav was taken back into custody. While being taken back, he had reportedly threatened to return to teach every woman in the slum, a lesson, with police being mute witness.
Under the visible circumstances, if women of the slum thought that this rapist murderer Akku Yadav, would again be released on bail and he would return to haunt them, it was the reality that was staring at them. They had to act. Laughed at and abused by the police when they reported being physically assaulted by Yadav, the women took the law into their own hands.
So, on 13th Aug. 2004, when he was brought to the court, women of Kasturba Nagar slum colony decided to hit and hit hard.
They had already gathered in the court premises, 200 of them, discretely armed with vegetable knives, chilli powder and stones. As he walked in, Yadav spotted one of the women he had physically assaulted. He called her a prostitute and threatened to repeat the crime against her. The police, reportedly laughed. Enraged, the woman took off her sandal and began hitting the goon, shouting “Its either you or me, both can’t live on this earth together.”
What followed was the most devastatingly deafening statement, loud and clear, on the monumental degeneration of criminal justice delivery system in the largest democracy.
For the already incensed crowd, the woman’s shouting was like a war cry and Akku Yadav was attacked from all sides, right in the court premises. Two terrified policemen guarding him ran away. In 15 minutes it was all over. The notorious gunda dropped dead on the shiny white marble floor of the Nagpur district court.
Women had reportedly thrown chilli powder on his face and attacked him with stones and knives. His penis was reportedly hacked by one of the women by a vegetable knife, and was inflicted with over 70 stab wounds. That this rowdy was killed inside the so-called temple of justice made the entire episode epochal by any standard.
“It was not calculated” says Usha. “It was not a case that we all sat and planned the attack. It was an emotional outburst. Women of the colony decided, that if necessary, they would all go to prison, but this man would never come back to terrorise them”.
As expected police arrested some 5 women and released them following demonstration across the city. Every woman living in Kasturba Nagar claimed responsibility for the killing of Yadav. “We have all done it together, arrest us all” they told the police.
As The Guardian’s Rekha Prasad wrote “Nagpur is counted among India’s fastest growing cities. Yet the experience of the women of Kasturba Nagar is a parallel tale of how everyday life in India’s back streets is stuck in the past. Splashed across the country’s news papers, the gory image of Yadav’s blood on the court room floor was a lesson in the consequences of a state unable to protect the weak and the vulnerable”.
After the incident some well known civil society voices were heard pleading for women as victims rather than accused. Justice BhauVahane, a retired high court judge had reportedly gone on record saying, “In the circumstances they underwent, they were left with no choice but to finish Akku. The women repeatedly pleaded with police for their security. But the police failed to protect them”.
As usual police had to find a scapegoat. They charged Usha Narayane, the most educated and vocal among these slum dwellers. Among the charges reportedly leveled against Usha were some of India’s most serious offences, including crimes amounting to treason. Usha claims, she “was not in the court when the killing took place, but was in the slum collecting signatures for a mass complaint against Akku Yadav. Police accuse me of planning the murder and that I started it. They made me a scapegoat. I have been singled out because I was the most vociferous critic of the police. Yes, my being educated did inspire the community” she admits.
Years passed and case is still to be heard according to some source. But some 4th estate sources from Nagpur informs that case is closed. But the world has not heard of the last word on Usha Narayane. Reportedly, she is unrepentant. May be somebody, somewhere has to take up her case as a model for Stree Shakthi. She is not merely woman but a Dalit at that. She deserves to be an icon among those so called emancipated women haggling for political power and more power.
Another inspiring story is that of Chandrapati of Karora village in Haryana. She was out and out non-descript person in an equally non-descript village. But events catapulted her to a stage of a real life heroine, something civil society could have always done but shied away from doing. Because, they do not have time, as a rule, for ISSUES & CONCERNS. Yes, we have Renuka Chaudharies, Brinda Karats and of course Sonia Gandhies and Sushma Swarajs, all pleading for women’s causes. But all of them put together have not done much to ameliorate the issues concerning women of India in general and rural women in particular.
But this non-descript Chandrapati emerged as trail blazer of an unusual kind. Married at 15 and widowed by the following 18. She mothered two daughters and two sons and was a dutiful mother to all of them. After spending 5 years in Kanpur, where her husband was a soldier with the Indian army, rest of the life was back in the village.
Despite the absence of husband, life of this mother and her 4 children went on uneventfully. Chandrapati’s elder son Manoj, by 2007, already was of marriageable age and started showing interest in one Babli of the same village. While, both were interested in getting married, problem was that they both belonged to the same family lineage or the gothra, as is called among Hindus. The marital alliances within the same gothra were reportedly looked down upon by the council of village elders, or what is called as Khap Panchayats. Despite the apparent disapproval of these councils, couple secretly got married in a temple outside their village and got the marriage registered, sometime in April 2007. Mothers of both the girl and the boy, reportedly didn’t mind, since it was the choice of the couple and parents had no other role except to bless the couple, was their take. Every thing looked alright for a while. Unfortunately that was not to be.
Relatives of the girl, her brother, cousins, uncles and her grand father who was the pradhan of the village Khap Panchayat, did not approve of the marriage. The family of the girl approached the local Khap Panchayat which cancelled the marriage and announced a social boycott of boy’s family. Apprehending trouble couple approached court which gave them protection. Reportedly, police who accompanied the couple slipped mid-way. Fearing the worst, couple decided to escape to Delhi, but the trailing relatives of the girl caught up with the couple and stopped the bus they were travelling in, and took the couple away, only to be killed, and their bodies thrown into a Barnala Link Canal in Hissar.
Suspecting foul play, Chandrapati had complained to Bhutana Police Station and an FIR was filed on 20th June. On 23rd June 2007, the mutilated bodies of Manoj and Babli were found.
Being without husband and having lost the son, who was the only earning member of the family, it was extremely difficult for Chandrapathi to pursue the case.
Undeterred, with no help from any local quarters she fought valiantly all the troubles and impediments created by the village folks at the behest of Khap Panchayat. Police had arrested all the accused in the mean while.
For almost 3 years, the case went on, in the Kaithal district court.
On 29th March 2010, after 33 months and 50 hearings, district judge Vani Gopal Sharma found the accused guilty of conspiracy, kidnapping, murder and destroying the evidence. The next day on 30th March, for the first time in Haryana State history, a death penalty verdict was announced in the double murder case for the five accused. All the five accused were the girl’s close relatives. Court convicted the Khap Panchayat pradhan to life sentence, who was also the grand father of the girl Babli, with the driver of the vehicle used in the kidnap, getting 7 years imprisonment.
The court also held 6 policemen guilty of dereliction of duty and asked for departmental action against them.
While Times of India had hailed 55 year old Chandrapati’s spirited struggle for justice as ‘Mom Courage’, so also other news papers did cover the issue, not much has been done to keep such fighting souls, in the national limelight. It needs to be highlighted again and again to inform our citizenry that, what politicians and highly placed educated bureaucrats could not do, an unlettered, unsung villager fought her way through the labyrinth called Indian criminal judicial system to emerge triumphant to give lessons in true leadership and leave her unmistakable footprints in the annals of women’s empowerment.
It is to the credit of Chandrapati that she is still pursuing the case to get the life sentence of Ganga Raj, the Khap Pradhan, converted to death sentence. However she rues “I am fighting, but my son died only because the girls male relatives could kill their own sister. As long as men can kill their own daughters, what change will there be?
That is indeed a very sad dimension of this Mera Bharath Mahan!
At this point what needs to be written is the shoddy representation of issues in the main stream media. While they only chase celebrities and the glamour world for their own market share of USP, they forget their duty in a country like India, where marginalised, weak and vulnerable are routinely treated. The Week magazine recently covered a young Indian lady Chhavi Rajawat on its cover page as SARPANCH, MBA. It was the story of an MBA graduate who quit her city life and returned to her family village to work as sarpanch. While this young lady certainly deserved her day in the sun, the media should never ignore or mock the valiant struggle of people like Usha Narayane and Chandrapati by forgetting to keep remembering such fighting souls. After all it is people like Usha and Chandrapati who truly empower women on the margins of our national life. Media need to celebrate such spirits and there are very many of them beyond the media glare.


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