Upper castes are trying to suppress us: Father of Nishad girl raped, murdered in UP’s Jaunpur

“The Thakurs in the village threatened me and said, ‘We will beat you so much you will go bald,’” a middle-aged Nishad resident of the Peshawa Mai Ghat village in the Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh, told us. The Nishads are a riverine community who were categorised as a Scheduled Caste in the state in 2019. On 30 May, the Nishad man’s minor daughter was found raped and murdered a short distance away from his house. Four days later, three youth from the village, Ajay Singh, Vipin Kharwar and Vinay Pathak were arrested, and the men confessed to gang raping the teenager and her murder in a statement to the police. Singh belongs to the Thakur community while Pathak hails from a Brahmin family. Kharwar, whose community falls under the Scheduled Castes in that region, is quite well off compared to the Nishad family. The father of the victim told us that families of the accused were coercing him to change his testimony. “We are being intimidated. The upper-caste people are trying to suppress our voice,” he added.

According to the father, late on the night of 29 May, his daughter, who was a student of tenth standard, was sleeping in the courtyard of their house. His eight-year-old son was with the girl, while his wife was sleeping inside the house. The father and the victim’s grandmother were sleeping some distance away from the house, next to two mango trees that the family owns. “It was the time of the lockdown,” he said, referring to the countrywide lockdown to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. “There was no work or money. I have two mango trees and I thought we might make some money from them for the household. So, I had started sleeping next to the trees to guard them.” He told us that next morning, around 5 am, “When I came back home after my ablutions, I saw a crowd of people in the bamboo bushes and I heard my wife crying. I ran towards the crowd and my daughter’s body was lying there.”

The father continued, “There was a gamchha”—thin, coarse cotton towel—“around my daughter’s neck. Her tongue was protruding. Her entire body was scratched and there was dirt all over her eyes and mouth.” He told us that he broke down and was completely disoriented. “After some time, when I tried to lift her, there was a lot of blood below her waist. I collapsed again, I could not even lift her body.” The father said that after some time he gathered the courage to lift her again and brought her body to their house. He also told us that by now several people from the village had gathered there and someone had recognised that the gamchha around her neck belonged to Pathak.

The victim’s grandmother corroborated the father’s narrative. She told us that the girl’s body was completely wet and had nail marks from top to bottom. “All of us were crying. There were a lot of people there and they recognised that gamchha around her neck as the pandit’s gamchha,” she said, referring to Pathak. She broke down quite often while she talked about her granddaughter. “She always used to cook and serve me food. She would tell me about her school. I did not understand much, but she used to talk to me. She was good in studies, like my grandson. She used to do her work on time.” She added, “My heart knows what happened to my baby girl. We cannot show that grief to the world.”

The father said that by the time he brought the body home, someone had informed the pradhan, or village head, Shivbadan Yadav, and almost the entire village had gathered around his house. “He came and asked us what we wanted to do. He was talking to us while sitting on his bike. He said that he had spoken to the Kairakat Police Station and they would not send anyone here.” The father then said that Yadav told them, “Burn her as soon as possible. Burn the gamchha, too. If you don’t, some other administration will send their people and then you will have problems; they will try and implicate you in her death.” The father told us, “My mind was not working. We were devastated and terrified, and so we cremated our daughter.”

The deceased girl’s maternal uncle, who is a lawyer, confirmed this and told us that the body was burnt at the behest of Yadav. “Think about it, if there is even a small quarrel in the village, then someone would call 112,” he said, referring to the state’s emergency number. “But for this, it’s such a big thing, the attitude of the pradhan was completely wrong.” Yadav was eventually arrested and charged with destruction of evidence on 14 June. He was released on bail a week later.

The victim’s father said that after the cremation, as the family was deciding what to do, his son told them that “three boys came in the night and took didi away and threatened to kill me, too.” The father added, “The boys themselves have admitted to the police that when the brother woke up, they threatened to kill him. My son got really scared.” He said that when they asked his son to identify them, the boy described what the youth were wearing, the gamchha which was later found on the girl’s body and a tattoo on one of their arms.

The father spoke of a series of incidents before his daughter’s murder. He said that Pathak had tried to harass his daughter about twenty days before the incident. “My daughter had gone to the mill to grind wheat. When she went inside to weigh the wheat, this pandit boy was there. He took out the key of my girl’s bicycle.” He said that the man who operates the mill helped her get her key back. In another incident, he said, “A few days ago, in the morning, my daughter was brushing her teeth outside the house. This Ajay Singh was crossing and he abused her. My daughter told me. I went to his house and sounded him off.”

The father said that just two days before the incident a man was bothering him by using different numbers to call him constantly. “He used to say he called me accidentally, or sometimes he would say that his phone has been diverted whenever someone calls. I rebuked him strongly and said, ‘It should not happen again.’” He also told us, “These three used to harass girls of the village when they would go to the toilet. They would write the girls’ names and phone numbers on walls.”

The victim’s father said that when he first went to the Kairakat Police Station on the night of 30 May, the police threatened and drove them away. According to the maternal uncle, the Kairakat station finally lodged an FIR in the case on 2 June, after a former member of parliament Ramcharitra Nishad called the police. However, the police booked the three youth under two charges—section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, which deals with murder, and section 201, which deals with destruction of evidence. The three youth were initially arrested based on these charges and on 5 June, Singh and Kharwar were released.

The maternal uncle told us, “It was the pressure of our leaders, our people and their protests that after 12 days the police came into action and added sections 376 and 506.” Section 376 pertains to gang rape and section 506 deals with criminal intimidation. Based on these additional charges, Singh and Kharwar were arrested again on 14 June while Pathak had remained in custody. “The police charged us also with attempt to break law and order during the pandemic because of these protests,” the maternal uncle added. He also told us that Singh was granted bail by the Allahabad High Court on 14 October.

The victim’s father was unhappy with the police. “After the convicts were caught, it took the police two days to call us to the station.” He added, “My daughter is gone. Now, these criminals should be punished, so that this cannot happen to anyone else’s daughter.” He also expressed worry about his son’s safety. “Thakurs and Pandits, they don’t forgive or forget.” He also said that Kharwar’s family had been harassing them. “Kharwar’s father said that if his son got punished, they will burn my house and make us pay their lawyer’s fees. He threatened me that if I even go towards their house, they will kill me.”

As he spoke about his daughter, he broke down again. “She had given her tenth standard papers this time. When her school teachers came to know, everyone came home. They said that she was a promising child. She was very good in studies.” He added, “She used to say, ‘Papa, I will study a lot and I will get a good job at a good post.’”