No Justice for Rape Victim in Rural Jharkhand

 

About the video: In Munda Toli village, Ranchi, Jharkhand a tribal woman was raped last year. Instead of arresting the rapist the police harassed the family members of the victim in many different ways. Bigu Munda,a resident of Munda Toli says, “the culprits are threatening us, they won’t even let us walk freely on the streets”. 

The victim was impregnated by her rapist and the victim died at childbirth.  To this Bigu Munda says “The people of our village and our neighbors didn’t even attend her funeral”. 

According to official records there were 753 cases of rape registered in the state of Jharkhand and in 2005, 552 cases of rape were registered from April – November 2011. Even today there is a lot of physical abuse inflicted on tribal women. Our community correspondent believes that law enforcers should be made to face rigorous punishment so that violence against innocent women can be stopped. 

Community Correspondent says: Priyasheela Besra a social worker who runs her own NGO ‘Saheli Adhiyan Kendra’ since 2003 has been endlessly fighting for the rights and respect of the Adivasi women in and around her locality. 

Some months back Priyasheela received a call from her friend Arpana (social activist) about a young adivasi rape victim’s family being harassed in Munda Toli village, around 16 kms away from her village. Priyasheela rushes to the village and was astonished to find out the rapist who was a 70 year old contractor from Bihar had got the whole village under his control. He threatened the villagers not to support the family in any way or they would have to deal with serious consequences. The rapist even had the inspectors and the politicians under his spell, and so obviously the rape victim and her family were denied justice.  

Priyasheela says “ Few days after the rape, the father called for a Panchayat, villagers refused to come forward and support the rape victim’s family”. 

Priyasheela along with her NGO fought for justice for the rape victim and her family. And after many triumphs they finally succeeded in getting the rapist behind bars along with the government paying the family a sum of rupees 50,000 as compensation.  The rape victim couldn’t be saved but  her six month old daughter is been taken good care of by an Orphanage called ‘Nirmala Niketan’ as the victims family cannot financial support the baby and also doesn’t want to face societal humiliation.

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