AHMEDABAD, 21 September — Months after communal mobs rampaged in the western state of Gujarat, many women who were raped by the criminals have seen no action taken against their aggressors, with police unwilling to take their complaints seriously.
Sultana Firoze, 24, was stripped naked by eight men in her village of Delol. Her life was spared, she said, only because she fell unconscious during the assault.
"The police have done nothing against the accused; they are still scot-free. But I’m determined to get justice," said Sultana, who has still not returned home.
Rape victims face a first obstacle in identifying the men who assaulted them. But perhaps the biggest barrier is the police, who in many cases refuse to believe the women were raped.
"In my view, it is not scientifically and psychologically possible to have a sexual urge when the public is rioting," said B.K. Nanavati, a deputy superintendent of police.
Asked about Sultana’s case, he acknowledged there may have been isolated cases of rape. New York-based Human Rights Watch and other rights groups have blasted the Gujarat authorities’ response to the riots, charging that police not only failed to prevent vigilante violence against Muslims but in some cases were even complicit in the attacks.
Rioting broke out across Gujarat — the largest state ruled by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Hindu-extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — after a mob torched a train on Feb. 27 that was carrying Hindu activists, killing 58 people.
Authorities say over 1,000 people have since died, most of them in the month after the train attack. Human rights groups, however, say the death toll may have been twice as high. Human Rights Watch in an April report said "scores" of Muslim women and girls were raped in Gujarat before being killed. Witnesses say sexual assault was systematic. "All the girls over 15 years old who were killed in the riots had been raped," said Mukhtar Muhammad, an organizer at the Kalol camp for people made homeless by the riots. "Hindu mobs burned their bodies to destroy evidence," he said.
S.M. Lal, who is campaigning to get the rapists punished, said the official attitude toward violence against women has hampered attempts to prosecute for sexual assault. "In the context of Gujarat, rape cases become even more difficult because of this whole belief that there was no gender violence during the riots," he said.
"These women have already suffered and there is no undoing what has already happened to them. But they have to get justice for those women who were raped and killed, and also to discourage men from committing such crimes against other women in the future," he said. But many are pessimistic that the police will take action.
Women’s rights activists say the problem is compounded by the traditional shame many rape victims feel in India. They also say that many of the tens of thousands of Muslims still homeless fear the majority Hindu community will not allow them to return to their homes if they fear being prosecuted for their actions during the riots.
"These women are under a lot of pressure to withdraw their statements. There is a threat to their lives and people from their villages are not allowing them to return back to their homes unless their retract their statements," said Nawas Kothwal of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.
The easy way out, activists say, is for all sides to say that accused rapists cannot be found. Said Nanavati, the police official: "The accused have not been arrested because they are absconding."
He said search warrants have been issued and police informants in villages are looking for the suspects, "but verification of their identities becomes difficult."
