KHAIRLANJI— a caste atrocityThe rape and murder of two women in Khairlanji drew belated attention from the media. This was a crime against the community as a whole and a crime of identity. A Dalit family living on the edge of a village in apartheid was fighting for a piece of land that had been encroached upon by members of the upper castes in the village.The fight for their rights led to retaliation from the upper castes. Two women were raped and murdered and this was a case that typically should have been decided under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prohibition of Atrocities) Act, 1989.Yet, when the case was taken to court, the accused were held guilty of murder but not of rape or committing offences under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prohibition of Atrocities) Act. The dispute was personalised instead of looking at the political and social context in which it occurred.Anand Teltumbde states that the State controlled the narrative. The legal outcome was: “The shattering atrocities were transformed into a simple crime committed in a fit of rage. The prosecution failed its brief on every front, whether in using the available hard evidence or in establishing an order of events that would have confirmed a history of caste abuse preceding the crime, or unearthing the crime that the revenge executed in a ghastly manner for defying the writ of the powerful had a clear caste context..“The crime was far from being preceded, it was merely the latest in a series of similar atrocities, and the neglect of this context could only have been deliberate.”Here again, we see not only the context being erased, but the very law which was intended to meet such a situation of discrimination and atrocity based on caste being erased. The allegations that the women were paraded naked and that the men had their genitals cut off sounded like an exaggeration to the judges, though these very acts find a place in the definition of “atrocity” in the Act. This was unbelievable.KathuaThe 2018 gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim tribal girl in Jammu and Kashmir revealed the deep intersection of communal tensions and sexual violence.The crime was meticulously planned— she was drugged and raped multiple times in a temple, with evidence such as traces of her hair recovered from the site. Delegations of Hindus supporting the accused disrupted proceedings, even blocking the filing of the chargesheet, prompting the Supreme Court to shift the trial to Punjab..What happens when an AI chatbot turns into a grooming paedophile?.Convictions were ultimately secured, thanks to the vigilance of J&K’s then Chief Minister. Yet, justice remains tainted, with figures such as Lal Singh— who obstructed justice— later rewarded with an election ticket by the Congress party in 2024. He lost the election but why was he given a ticket at all? There was no social disapproval of the gang rape, but rather denialism persisted.HathrasA 19-year-old Dalit woman in UP was attacked and gang raped by four upper-caste Thakurs. Her body was found half-naked in the field. The filing of the first information report (FIR) was delayed and the body was cremated in a hurry in the absence of her family.One person was convicted of culpable homicide not amounting to murder while there was no conviction for rape. Those who visited Hathras to support the victim came back and reported that this was a hapless situation with the accused Thakurs having the full support of the Chief Minister.Sidheeq Kappan, the reporter who was travelling to Hathras to report on the crime, was arrested and kept in prison for over two years, leading to a sharp decline in his health. It was important to keep the facts away from the public domain and Kappan paid the price for trying to do that..The rape and murder of two women in Khairlanji drew belated attention from the media..ManipurIn May 2023, videos of two women from Manipur being harassed and paraded naked went viral. The incident occurred in Thoubal district, where the victims initially sought refuge in a police vehicle. Despite their pleas, the police claimed the vehicle had no key and later abandoned them to the mob. The mob assaulted the male victim accompanying them, leading to his death, and tore off the women’s clothes before assaulting them.This was one of the recent cases in which the Supreme Court took suo moto notice after the videos of the women went viral. A commission headed by a retired high court judge was set up to deal with relief and rehabilitation for refugees who were internally displaced.While the relief was seen as a humanitarian exercise necessary for relief, there was no reparation. No attempts were made to seek accountability, legal or political, for the conditions of near civil war in Manipur, which continues till today.But at least the Supreme Court was honest enough to acknowledge that it was not the competent authority to call out the army to bring the situation under control. The violence continues despite the fact that the ruling party at the Union level and in the state are the same, and the Chief Minister in office is also from the same party. His support for his own community makes any resolution of the conflict impossible.R.G. KarJunior doctors, whom I was also asked to represent, instead of being supported for raising structural issues, were demonised for going on strike and for supposedly neglecting patients, who were allegedly dying for want of medical assistance..How identity politics and unidentifiable solidarities affected the 2024 US Presidential elections.The Supreme Court took suo motu notice of the case, as the “conscience of the nation was outraged”. The spectacle in court had to be seen to be believed. Innumerable lawyers were representing West Bengal, which was in denial, and on the other side, there was a crowd of Bharatiya Janata Party lawyers demanding justice.In the middle stood the lawyers representing the voice of rationality, of the doctors, who spoke in a unified voice drawing attention not only to the rape and murder but also to the “threat culture”, a term that entered legal discourse for the first time, that is the context in which the rape and murder occurred.The focus was effectively taken away from the rape and murder and its cover-up to the absence from duty of the doctors. We did to some extent succeed in shifting the conversation in court back to the main issues of rape and death as also the complete absence of safety at the workplace for women.One of the first things that the Supreme Court did was to set up a National Task Force of Doctors (NTF) from all over the country with a mandate to suggest what changes were necessary to ensure the safety of doctors in the workplace. Its report has been recently submitted, suggesting additions to infrastructure and recommending security measures for hospitals to enable access to the police force.It is unfortunate that the NTF had no member on it from West Bengal. An opportunity to address the specificity of the situation in West Bengal was lost. The Supreme Court has asked all states to respond to the suggestions. No doubt all states will accept the suggestions but how many of them will implement them is another matter. Independent monitoring and constant engagement with the state will be required by the movement of doctors to achieve the desired outcome..In Manipur, while the relief was seen as a humanitarian exercise necessary for relief, there was no reparation..States cannot be expected to monitor themselves. When statutory bodies give up on their monitoring and standard-setting role, the rule of law has broken down. There are a host of statutes governing the field: The West Bengal Medical Act of 1914 sets up the West Bengal Medical Council. Its duty is to register medical practitioners.It is at these points that medical professionals experienced threats of non-registration if they raised demands at the student level, jeopardising their careers. They were thus silenced by the fear of not being registered to practise medicine.Why did the council allow this to happen? The West Bengal Medical Act has been passed to set up the University of Medical Studies and to affiliate medical colleges. Why has this statutory body failed to monitor the functioning of medical institutions?The anti-ragging regulations were framed under orders of the Supreme Court to prevent students from being threatened and harassed. Why has this body not become functional? Elections to student bodies are meant to be conducted annually, why were no elections held since 2012? The West Bengal health recruitment board was accused of favouritism in recruiting staff, why was this allowed to happen?.SC issues guidelines on prevention of child marriages, sidesteps question on personal laws.At each stage of the journey of doctors as students or as junior residents, they faced the threat of loss of employment or educational benefits. There were no grievance redressal mechanisms in place and no internal complaints committees for sexual harassment.When nominated doctors and students are put in representative bodies, it is the way to end the democratic functioning of an institution. The administration of individual hospitals is in the hands of the principal. When these bodies fail to monitor or actively take sides, there is bound to be discrimination, victimisation, corruption, rape and murder.The cover-upAlmost all the cases mentioned above involved an attempt to cover up what happened. The activism of the women’s movement has been to uncover the cover-up and demand systemic change. It is not enough to say that the rape and murder are being investigated by the CBI, what must also be investigated is the cover-up and the systemic causes that lead to the rape and murder.ImpunityA cover-up can only be made possible when a culture of impunity exists at the centres of power. From the medical university to the medical council, from the examination board to the recruitment board, from the police to the highest administrators in the state, there had been a failure to monitor the health of the health delivery system.Without the active participation of the elected representatives of the stakeholders, there can be no justice. The setting up of an NTF by the Supreme Court left much to be desired. Besides having no representative from West Bengal, its recommendations are benign and are meant to be implemented countrywide..The focus was effectively taken away from the rape and murder and its cover-up to the absence from duty of the doctors..No one can disagree with them— more toilets, more restrooms and more CCTV cameras. But the question remains unanswered, who will watch the watchmen? Monitoring the number of toilets in the hospital is not the task of the Supreme Court. It is only stakeholders in decision-making who can do that effectively.Nominated bodies are no substitute for a functioning democracy, all stakeholder bodies, whether they are grievance committees, redressal systems, or monitoring bodies, must have elected representatives from among the students, interns, doctors, nurses and other health workers. These are simple demands that remain unfulfilled as of now.The atrocity that is rapeThere was a time when we felt outraged by the very mention of the word “rape”. There was a time when we were scandalised that someone we know or read about was raped. Today, rape evokes a response when it becomes an ‘atrocity’..Is it time for a law addressing sexual violence against Muslim women?.Many have argued that the public protest and outrage that occurred in all the above cases is due to the fact that the women abused were middle-class women and not Dalit women or women from other marginalised communities. There is an amount of truth in this, but that is not the whole story. It seems to me that the outrage was focused on the brutality of the act which created an ‘atrocity’ for us all to see.The women's movement has attempted to expose the context in which the rapes occurred and to demand systemic change. All these cases make us question— is rape really just an act of interpersonal violence? I believe no, rape is seldom an isolated act of violence; it is deeply embedded, knit and woven in broader social, political and systemic contexts. These contexts often surface most visibly when rape intersects with ‘atrocity’ or culminates in death, forcing society to confront its collective failures.Whether it is caste hierarchies in the cases of Bhanwari Devi and Khairlanji, communal violence in Bilkis Bano and Kathua, or systemic collapse as seen in Hathras and Manipur, the context surrounding rape reflects the deeply entrenched power imbalances and structural injustices that very often motivate and facilitate the act.In most of these situations, rape was a disaster waiting to happen. This trend reveals a harrowing reality: the forces that enable and perpetuate sexual violence are often erased or ignored unless the crime is so egregious that it shatters societal complacency. Rape as an ‘atrocity’ shakes the conscience of society that has perhaps normalised ‘mere’ rape and fallen numb to its existence..The activism of the women’s movement has been to uncover the cover-up and demand systemic change..Dead women tell no liesWhat is the story that these cases are telling us? Rape must be followed by death to eliminate the sole witness to the crime. The body of the dead woman must be cremated immediately to prevent a proper forensic examination of the case.One of the best forensic scientists I met in my life, during a coroner's court hearing, once told me: “Dead bodies tell no lies.” He went on to say, “Show me the dead body, and I will tell you how the murder occurred.”A woman, when alive, is the best evidence of the crime, and a dead body is also the best evidence of the crime. It is necessary to eliminate both to prevent the truth from coming to light..Law, sex and patriarchy: Kerala in light of the Hema Committee report.What triggers the public imagination is not rape. Rape is simply sex, and sex is rape, as we see in the context of marital rape. Such is the normalisation of rape in our society. It is when we see ‘atrocity’ that ‘the conscience of the nation is aroused’. Brutality, blood and murder demand justice. It is not gender justice that is demanded but death to the brute who committed the brutal crime.ProtestTo say that protest leads to law enforcement agencies waking up from their slumber is a truism with which no one will disagree. To say that some of these cases led to important law reforms is also something with which we cannot disagree.Every change that has occurred in the law in relation to rape has occurred on the backs of working-class women and the shoulders of protest and resistance as we have seen. Beginning with Mathura, moving on to Bhanwari Devi, and then to Nirbhaya and Kathua. Each one of these rapes sparked legal reform, specific to the incident in question. There is a dynamic relationship between movements, the courts and law reform, which has led to some systemic change.Protest is a birthright in the face of oppression. This country’s founding faith has been non-violent protest as a form of achieving independence from foreign rule. The struggle for independence did not end in 1947 since oppression did not end in 1947.The protest that we saw in relation to the rape and murder of a junior doctor in R.G. Kar hospital ranks, in my opinion, along with other recent successful protests that we have seen. We saw the protest of the women in Shaheen Bagh against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA). This, along with the results of the national register of citizens in Assam, led to the delay in implementing CAA..Without the active participation of the elected representatives of the stakeholders, there can be no justice. The setting up of an NTF by the Supreme Court left much to be desired..We also saw protests by farmers against the three farm laws, which the Union government tried to introduce behind their backs. This led to the withdrawal of the three laws. The protest in West Bengal, by the doctors and civil society, led to a partial check on the authoritarian tendencies in West Bengal.Political parties of the Opposition were not allowed to destabilise the state, while maintaining the sanctity of the right to protest and the non-partisan nature of the movements of civil society and the doctors.These three protest movements have shown us that we need not feel intimidated by majoritarian governments and that, in the ultimate analysis, protest is the harbinger of change and justice.What is justice?However, the bigger question still looms— unanswered and maybe even unaddressed. What is this justice that is so central and the core of all systems? We talk of gender justice with an idea in our head. But we never question what this idea demands, what this idea encapsulates and how it must be embodied..Anti-rape litigation, implementation and the need for revision.What is justice? I recount the reaction of a woman whose own husband was shot dead by her parents by hiring a sharpshooter in cold blood. Her parents; her brother, a conspirator; and the sharpshooter were prosecuted for murder. Her brother was acquitted since he was not present at the scene of the crime. The parents and the sharpshooter were convicted.On surrendering in court, her mother turned to her son and said, “You have been acquitted, we too will soon be out.” The daughter, who was supposed to taste victory at last, collapsed. She saw her mother with no remorse for what she had done.For her mother, her daughter had committed the unforgivable crime of crossing caste barriers by marrying outside her caste and it was the daughter who should have been punished, not the mother. So where was the justice for the daughter after all, even when her parents were sentenced to jail for life?Where is the justice, where is the reform, where is the change? Justice is not just retribution. It is not merely penalisation. It is contextual. Justice is a promise of non-repetition. Justice is an assurance of the veracity of systems, of society and of collective conscience.In every protest that shakes the foundations of power, we see an inherent demand not just for accountability but for assurance: that such atrocities will never happen again. Justice, therefore, cannot be reduced to the confines of a courtroom or a penal code; it must be expansive, inclusive and forward-looking..Every change that has occurred in the law in relation to rape has occurred on the backs of working-class women and the shoulders of protest and resistance..As I said before, protests serve as catalysts for justice. They awaken systems from their slumber and force them to act. The protests against the brutal rape and murder of a junior doctor at R.G. Kar Hospital in West Bengal, for instance, stand as a testament to this.Much like the protests against the CAA at Shaheen Bagh, the farmers' protests against the three contentious farm laws, and the relentless demonstrations for Nirbhaya, they underscore a critical truth: justice does not arise in a vacuum. It is forged in the crucible of collective dissent. On the backs of protestors and victims, however painful, we have seen change come across.Even though the incidents themselves are horrid, they have been catalysts for setting changes in narratives. The Aparajita law in West Bengal, though significant, is a limited response to an expansive problem. But, as some have pointed out, the accused, knowing the crime of rape carries the death penalty, could commit murder as there is no penalty higher than death.What then is justice ?.Aparajita Bill: The inadequacy of rape law reform.Justice, in its truest sense, must encompass much more. I must quote the South African President Thabo Mbeki here as an instructive example. As Mbeki engaged with Sudanese communities in town hall meetings discussing solutions for the Darfur problem, he was met with emotional rage questioning why Omar al-Bashir was not being arrested. Mbeki challenged them to define what justice meant to them. What, he asked, was their ultimate goal? Was it peace, reconciliation, democracy and justice? Or was it to see al-Bashir behind bars? And what else might justice entail: restitution, compensation and apologies?These were not abstract questions. His inquiry reveals a profound truth: Justice must be rooted in the lived experiences and aspirations of those who seek it. It must promise more than punishment; it must promise change.In India, this broader vision of justice often feels elusive. The outrage ignited by the horrific cases of Kathua, Hathras and Manipur exposes the systemic and structural failures that enable such violence..Rape, as an atrocity, is rarely a standalone act. It is a manifestation of caste, communal and patriarchal oppressions deeply embedded in the fabric of society..Rape, as an atrocity, is rarely a standalone act. It is a manifestation of caste, communal and patriarchal oppressions deeply embedded in the fabric of society. Unless we confront these interwoven injustices, justice will remain partial, and its promise unfulfilled.Protests, however, remind us of what is possible. They have proven time and again that the mightiest governments can be held to account. Yet, justice demands more than episodic victories. It requires systemic reform and a commitment to non-repetition. Justice must not only ensure accountability but also dismantle the conditions that allow atrocities to occur.It is not enough to punish the offender or enact laws in response to public outcry. We must ask ourselves the questions Mbeki posed to the Sudanese: What is our ultimate goal? Is it merely to punish the guilty, or is it to build a society where such guilt never arises? Justice, then, is not a destination but a journey— a continuous effort to transform outrage into action, suffering into solidarity and violence into peace. With inputs from Ajitesh Singh.A version of this series was delivered as the 2024 Rituparno Ghosh Memorial Lecture in Kolkata on December 21.
