INTRODUCTION
Ø Smt. Bhanwari Devi is a woman living in Bhateri village in Rajasthan. She came to Bhateri post her marriage. She was a child bride as she was married when she was not even 8 years old, and her husband was around 10 years old at that time.
Ø She belongs to the lower caste community of kumhars.
Ø Bhateri is a village which is majorly inhabited by the people belonging to the Gujjar (High Caste community.)
Ø In 1992, Smt. Bhanwari Devi was working as a ‘sathin’ (i.e. a social worker) employed under the Women’s Development Project launched by the Rajasthan Government.
Ø The District Women’s development Agency had assigned her several tasks which involved going door-to-door in the village, campaigning against social ills - she would tell women about hygiene, family planning, the benefits of sending their daughters to school, and she would discourage female foeticide, infanticide, dowry and child marriages.
Ø The sathins also had to contact the police, if they found someone indulging in child marriage and forcibly marrying off their daughter.
THE INCIDENT
Ø In 1992, the Rajasthan Government, decided to organise an anti-child marriage fortnight just before the festival of Akha Teej. The stopping of child Marriage became a challenge under this programme. Smt. Bhanwari Devi was involved in the project and persuaded people in her village to not perform child marriage.
Ø However, some influential Gujar families were adamant to go through with the child marriage as planned. One of them was Ram Karan Gujar.
Ø Smt. Bhanwari visited the house of Ram Karan Gujar of Bhateri and tried to dissuade him from going through with the marriage of his one-year-old daughter. Smt. Bhanwari was met with a hostile response. Even the MLA of the area was opposed to her efforts.
Ø The Sathins under the project made a list of villages wherein child marriage was rampant. These villages were then visited by police officials to thwart child marriages. One such police visit was made at the house of Ram Karan Gujar’s house on May 5, 1992.
Ø However, despite these efforts, Ram Karan Gujar managed to get his daughter married at 2:00 AM the next day and no action was taken against the family by the police.
Ø Post this episode, Smt. Bhanwari Devi and her family were boycotted in the village and were threatened by the upper-caste Gujar residents of the village. They could not digest the fact that the marriage was stopped by a lower caste woman.
The Ordeal.
Ø On the evening of September 22, 1992, when Smt. Bhanwari and her husband were working in the field, 5 Gujar men from the same village attacked her husband and beat him viciously with sticks. When Smt. Bhanwari tried to save her husband, she too was thrashed, and nasty abuses were shouted at her.
Ø Two attackers then pinned her to the ground and the remaining 3 took turns to rape her. She pleaded for mercy, but it had no effect on her attackers. Her mouth was gagged to prevent her from screaming.
Ø The Gujar’s thus exacted their revenge on Smt. Bhanwari Devi who had ‘humiliated them’ and had angered them by her audacious efforts to prevent the marriage of the infant. This was their way to teach a lesson to Smt. Bhanwari and her husband.
Ø The next day, she filed an FIR against the incident. This FIR was significant because it was extremely rare that a low-caste woman showed the courage to file a rape complaint against rich, powerful men in the village.
AFTERMATH
The Legal Tangle
Ø In a blatant disregard for the provisions of law, the medical examination of Smt. Bhanwari was conducted 52 hours post the incident instead of 24 hours as mandated by the Cr.P.C.
Ø She was subjected to inhuman treatment by the police during the entire time between filing her FIR to her medical examination. They were skeptical about the claims of Ms. Bhanwari from the moment she had filed her complaint.
Ø The MLA made a statement in the state legislative assembly claiming that Smt. Bhanwari she was lying about her ordeal. The political forces in the region, majorly belonging to the higher caste too were against her. Even the Chief Minister disbelieved Smt. Bhanwari’s claims and made a shocking statement asking who would want to rape a grey-haired woman? The upper caste members of the state cabinet tried to suppress the case.
Ø Smt. Bhanwari however, had the support of the WDP who contacted the National Commission for Women, which conducted an independent enquiry into the incident and confirmed that Smt. Bhanwari Devi was indeed raped. The Commission then recommended an independent enquiry by the CBI.
Ø The CBI made Smt. Bhanwari make her statement 9 times before the top CBI officials intervened, that too only after pressure being put by women group in Delhi and Jaipur. The accused were charge-sheeted by the CBI after a full year.
Ø On 27th September 1993, CBI finally issued arrest-warrants against the accused. A few months later, when the accused finally decided to show up, their bail application was rejected by the High Court. The High Court while rejecting the application accepted that Smt. Bhanwari was gang raped.
The Sessions Court Judgement
Ø The trial in the sessions court started in October 1994. Five judges were changed during the trial and the judgement was delivered by the sixth judge. Though the case was heard ‘in-camera’, Smt. Bhanwari Devi had to tell her story in the presence of 17 men. She was even cross-examined on humiliating questions such as her position when she was raped and who held her arms and legs during the act.
Ø When the statements she made in court reached the villagers in Bhateri, she was subjected to taunts and abuses by them.
Ø The Sessions Court gave its decision in 1995 acquitting the accused in the case. Several reasons given for the acquittal included the absurd believes that-
o rape is generally perpetrated by teenagers, and since the accused were middle-aged and therefore respectable, they could not have committed the crime;
o that members of the higher caste cannot rape a lower caste woman because of reasons of purity;
o that Bhanwari Devi's husband could not have quietly watched his wife being gang raped.
Ø The accused were sentenced for just 9 months after being convicted for lesser offences such as conspiracy and assault.
Ø The Rajasthan Government reluctantly appealed against this judgement. Only 1 hearing has been conducted in 22 years.
Reaction to The Session Court’s Judgement
Ø December 1995 saw a major rally being organised to protest the judgement and to express solidarity with Smt. Bhanwari Devi. This rally saw the participation of various women groups, social actions groups, civil society groups in Rajasthan and from across the country. Smt. Bhanwari devi received support at both national and international level.
Ø Thousands of men and women from rural and urban areas marched in Jaipur in a loud protest against the judgement. They condemned the state for its tardy response and demanded speedy justice.
Ø In a special event was organised by some feminist activists to honour Smt. Bhanwari Devi, Mr. Justice Krishna Iyer, who participated in the event, severely condemned the sessions court judgement calling it a dark day in the history of Indian courts and Indian Constitution.
Backlash
Ø Smt. Bhanwari Devi faced immense social pressure and taunts through-out her arduous journey. The police, political forces, and even the villagers were skeptical of the story since the first day and accused her of lying. The acquittal of the accused increased that pressure even more. The villagers accused her of shaming the village.
Ø The members of the Gujar community pleaded with her several times to withdraw the case. The members of the Gujar community even invited her to a meeting wherein they placed their turban at her feet and begged her to settle the matter outside court and depose in court that she was not raped. She agreed to do so only if the accused confessed their acts openly in a large gathering of villagers. The accused however refused to accept this condition and became more acrimonious towards her.
Ø Pressure and threats to withdraw the case has become an everyday part of her life.
Ø She was boycotted by the villagers not only because of the stigma of rape but also because she showed the guts to talk about the crime.
Ø People refused to buy clay vessels from her family. The family was denied all services in the village. No grain or milk reached them. Her family members were not allowed to fetch water from the village as well. Bhanwari’s kids were bullied in school. They were shunned from all events and festivities. Later, her son dropped out of college due to the taunts and abuses he was subjected to.
Ø Post the acquittal by the sessions court, her own family wanted her to make peace with the accused and severed ties with her when she refused their suggestions.
Ø Despite all these pressures, she undauntedly pursued the case and continued her work as a ‘Saathin’.
Awards and Recognition.
Ø Smt. Bhanwari Devi’s courage was acknowledged when she visited Beijing for the Fourth World Women’s Courage. She won many awards including the Neerja Bhanot Bravery Award in 1994.
Ø In 2002 she was felicitated by the Stree Adhikari Samiti in North Campus, University of Delhi.
Ø In 1999 a film named ‘Bawandar’ was named which was inspired by the story of
Smt. Bhanwari Devi. This movie was shown in both domestic as well as international cinemas.
Ø She won several grants and accolades by central and state government.
IMPLICATIONS
Ø Smt. Bhanwari’s case was a major step in increasing the awareness of sexual violence faced by women in the country.
Ø The failure of the government to provide protection to Smt. Bhanwari Devi and the failure of the justice system to bring the accused to justice led to nation-wide outrage, debates and
Ø Her fight also inspired many other rural women who started to speak out about their own harrowing experiences of sexual violence and harassment. They started to speak about rape openly and resolved that issue of sexual violence is not an issue to remain silent about and that the issue was not to be allowed to die down and the fight against every patriarchal structure, including that of the family, state and workplace needed to be kept alive.
Ø It also generated the awareness about how caste and gender inequalities and hierarchies of power were used against women of marginalised communities to deny them their rights and access to justice for its enforcement and redressal. It also showed the states own failure to protect its own employee who was entitled to state protection.
Ø The case also exposed and challenged the stigma of rape and the culture of silence and shame resulting from it. The national solidarity achieved through her case showed that a woman who had been raped didn’t lose her self-respect or dignity, rather it were accused who has lost their honour and dignity. Smt. Bhanwari’s courage therefore broke the silence around rape and masculinity. As a journalist wrote in her article, “She remains self-assured, her confidence never wavering. For the world she may be a rape victim; for herself she is not.”
Ø It thus exposed the fact that men are conditioned into believing that violence is a tool for self-assertion and that it was a flawed patriarchal construction of masculinity prevalent in the society which made men violent.
Ø Smt. Bhanwari case was the inspiration behind the Vishaka Guidelines issued by the Supreme Court in the landmark Vishaka and ors. v State of Rajasthan AIR 1997 SC 3011. which has further inspired the Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act 2013.
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