Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

(Box 17.1 continued)
Women’s Development under Patriarchy 379
fearing that this would worsen the situation. Slowly tempers cooled,
though the entire Gujjar community remained hostile. When the
visits from other WDP functionaries had stopped due to this false
sense of security, a very sordid incident occurred. On the evening of
22 September 1992, a group of Gujjar men (including the man against
whom the complaint of child marriage had been made) beat up
Bhanwari’s husband and raped Bhawari in his presence.
What happened afterwards was even more shocking. Though in physical
and emotional pain, Bhanwari had the courage to insist on a
police complaint and a medical examination to establish the charge
of rape. The familiar tale of rape victims enacted itself yet again:
Bhawari was shuttled from one police station to another, from one
doctor to another, each of whom viewed her complaint with extreme
suspicion and dilly-dallied on one procedural pretext or the other.
Even as WDP officials and sympathetic bureaucrats could only watch
in despair, a section of the administration, the police and politicians
went all out to denounce her. The WDP, which was built on
the foundation of state support for rural women’s struggles, of trust
between government, NGOs and people, stood thoroughly exposed.
WDP functionaries also capitalised on the incident. As sathins’ tempers
were running high, it was possible to instigate sathins against
prachetas (who were then agitating for better working conditions)
by labelling prachetas as self-seeking, since their work did not expose
them to the same level of risk as the sathins.
The final exposition of patriarchy came when the Rajasthan High
Court delivered its judgement on the case. All the accused were let
off for want of evidence. The investigating agencies, on political
instructions, had done a shoddy job. For his part, the learned judge
came to the conclusion that the rape seemed prima facie impossible
as it was inconceivable that higher-caste men would rape a lowercaste
woman, that too in the presence of her husband. To the judge’s
mind, the delay in registering the complaint also gave room for suspicion.
Agitating women’s groups forced the government to go in
appeal to the Supreme Court. No one knew how long Bhanwari Devi’s
wait for justice would be.