Please - Odhikar

6. Acknowledgements and References:
� Asian Human Rights Commission - press releases, statements, urgent appeals
www.ahrchk.net
� New law needed for witness protection - article by H Suresh, Combat Law, Volume 4, Issue
1, April-May 2005 (published May 2005 in India Together)
Victim and the Issue of Human Rights
By Prof. Buddhadeb Chaudhuri*, Kolkata, India
"Victims" have been defined as persons who, individually or collectively, have suffered
harm, including physical or mental injury, emotional suffering, economic loss or substantial
impairment of their fundamental rights, through acts or omissions that are in violation of
criminal laws operative within States, including those laws proscribing criminal abuse of power.
Let me start with an incident.
Two years ago, on a cold January night, Joyeetaa Bala Das was allegedly raped by five Border
Security Force (BSF) men. Her husband and eldest daughters, witness to the crime, were
murdered. With nowhere to go and no one to turn to, the 32 years old woman found refuge in the
unlikeliest of places- the Presidency Jail. Her rapists, though, roam free.
Today, Joyeeta Bala Das is too afraid to even step out of her safe house. She fears she too may
be eliminated. Clutching her four-year-old daughter close, she spends her day like a normal
prisoner instead. Joyeeta has been languishing in the jail since January 14, 2003. She does not
harbour any hope of life outside. Her case rarely comes up for hearing in the past two years; she
has been to court only twice. In her first appearance at a Basirhat court, she was sent to
Presidency Jail in 'safe custody.' Throough out all this time, she has had just one visitor - her
brother Jagadish Das. He could do nothing for her, so he stopped visiting.
For Joyeeta, however, this life is better than the ordeal she survived. She claims to be from Bena
village in North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India and married a Bangladeshi and settled there.
The family was on its way to Bena, when they were intercepted by a BSF patrol at the border.
Records at Basirhat police station show that Joyeeta was raped. What she underwent was worse.
Joyeeta, her husband and two daughters were taken to BSF's 122 battalion outpost. Police
records show she was taken to battalion's Assistant Commandant Puneet Kumar's room and
raped, not just by him but by four others - head constables Gaya Prasad, G. Birbhan Singh,
Kanan Singh and constable Hanuman Thapa. Her husband and eldest daughter - eyewitnesses to
the incident - were killed. Their bodies were dumped in a country boat, the boat punctured and
set afloat on the Ichhamati river. Police found the bodies later.
The police probed the case but never interrogated the accused. Joyeeta helped the police as much
as she could. She showed them the place where she was raped, identified the five accused
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