Don't You Remember My Story?

A child gang rape survivor's 12-year long ordeal in Sikar, Rajasthan shows how calls for punishment of perpetrators don't always mean empathy for the victim

- Tarique Anwar

TWELVE years after she survived a brutal gang rape, Shabnam (name changed), now 24, wonders whether dying on that horrible night would have been any worse. It would have spared her at least the battering of her soul that followed, even from those she had hoped to lean on. “I’ve been left to die a little every day,” she says. Her pleas for rehabilitation with dignity ignored by the authorities, Shabnam and her mother are currently lodged in a night shelter in Sikar, Rajasthan, where she endures “an unspeakable emotional torment”, she says, without opportunities for a steady livelihood or education. “Everyone keeps me at a distance. My brother doesn’t even talk to my mother because she lives with me. He believes my suffering has brought shame upon him. What was my fault?” she asks.

Justice had been served, it was said, when two of the accused were sentenced to life imprisonment on July 26, 2016 by the Sikar District and Sessions court, which also acquitted four giving them the benefit of doubt. The charges were under the Indian Penal Code sections of 363 (kidnapping), 366 (abduction of a woman with intention to compel her for forced marriage), 366(a) (inducing a minor girl with the intention of forced seduction and intercourse), 376(2)(f ) and (g) (rape of a minor girl), 325 (voluntarily causes grievous hurt), 34 (common intention), among others.

Justice, however, hasn’t quite alleviated the survivor’s suffering or ensured her protection. Inside the cramped shelter, the air is thick with the stench of neglect—and of despair, deepened by the dark and filthy washroom on the ground floor that allows little privacy. The first floor, where mother and daughter stay, is easy to access—also for intruders. The struggle for basic privacy and security is a daily ordeal and reminder of the vulnerability that has been a constant companion since that night in 2012.