- Eleven men who should have died in prison for their unspeakable crimes were released, welcomed and garlanded.
“Has this really happened? Are you sure? What are we going to do now,” a stunned Bilkis Bano asked her husband Yaqub Rasul on August 15, India’s Independence Day, as she learned that her rapists who had also killed her family were released from prison.
“We were blindsided,” Rasul told me on the phone, talking haltingly, resigned and beaten. “We learned of their release from TV news. We got no legal notice. Our lawyer wasn’t informed.” After a pause, he added, “We are shaken. We are scared to the core.”
Who would have thought Bano’s terrifying ordeal from 20 years ago still had scope to get worse? As Hindu mobs raced around Ahmedabad in 2002 killing nearly 2,000 Muslims over days, 11 village men raped Bano, who was 21 years old and five months pregnant. They also killed 14 in her family, including her mother and a 3-year-old daughter.
It would take Bano six years and superhuman courage to face off a criminal state and the constant threats of violence from the Hindu rightwing to get life imprisonment for the 11. She and her family struggled for years to put the nightmare behind and move on.
“I trusted the system, and I was learning slowly to live with my trauma. The release of these convicts has taken from me my peace and shaken my faith in justice.”
Three days ago, the nightmare came back in screeching horror. Eleven men who should have died in prison for their unspeakable crimes were released, welcomed and garlanded, and their mouths stuffed with sweets. Portly and balding, not one was repentant. The temerity to show their faces publicly, galling by any civilized norms, came naturally to them.
“I don’t know what to say to Bilkis,” Rasul told me, speaking in unfinished sentences, as I held the phone quietly. “I have been giving her false assurances…”
What most people don’t realize is that these rape-and-murder convicts have seen freedom in the past too by getting parole. “We used to be scared when they used to come out on parole,” Rasul said. “Now that they are out, we fear for our lives. We were only just beginning to start a new life, putting our horrific past behind.”
Bano has now released a statement through a lawyer. It is worth quoting it in the full:
“Two days ago, on August 15, 2022, the trauma of the past 20 years washed over me again. When I heard that the 11 convicted men who devastated my family and my life, and took from me my 3-year-old daughter, had walked free. I was bereft of words. I am still numb. Today, I can say only this – how can justice for any woman end like this? I trusted the highest courts in our land. I trusted the system, and I was learning slowly to live with my trauma. The release of these convicts has taken from me my peace and shaken my faith in justice. My sorrow and my wavering faith is not for myself alone but for every woman who is struggling for justice in the courts. No one enquired about my safety and well-being, before taking such a big and unjust decision. I appeal to the Gujarat Government, please undo this harm. Give me back my right to live without fear and in peace. Please ensure that my family and I are kept safe.”
Sadly, both Rasul and Bilkis know good conscience is not something that Indian polity or jurisprudence display anymore.
Sarita Pandey is an artist, a digital media professional, and volunteers for human rights advocacy groups. She lives in the DMV area. She posts her art on instagram.com/saritatheobscure and tweets about issues she cares about at twitter.com/saritapandey.