BY
GUEST WRITER
September 9, 2015 at 2:53 PM
By
Gopika Bashi, @gopikabashi, Women’s Rights Researcher, Amnesty International
India
On
24 August, Amnesty International India launched a petition regarding two Dalit
sisters who had been ordered to be raped and paraded naked by a khap panchayat
– an unelected village council – in Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh in northern India,
as ‘punishment’ because their brother had eloped with a married woman from a
dominant caste.
Amnesty
offices around the world circulated similar petitions, so that our supporters
globally would have an opportunity to take action. Over 500,000 people have so
far signed these petitions.
Some
media organizations have subsequently released reports which have questioned
the petition. Some have said that members of the gram panchayat – the elected
village council – and members of the dominant caste have denied the
allegations. Others have claimed that Amnesty did not investigate the case.
Unfortunately,
these reports have taken the attention away from the situation of the sisters
themselves, who along with their family still fear for their safety.
We
first took notice of the case when the Supreme Court provided a response on 18
August to a 146-page writ petition filed by Meenakshi Kumari, one of the
sisters, seeking protection and investigation. It is highly unusual for a Dalit
family to approach the Supreme Court with such a petition. The family has also
submitted complaints to the National Human Rights Commission and the National
Commission for Scheduled Castes.
We
immediately got in touch with the lawyer and the family (with whom we remain in
regular contact), and reviewed the documentation submitted to the Supreme
Court, which detailed a history of harassment and intimidation. We also
contacted journalists at the national and state level, who were unable to
substantiate the information. We also spoke to local police officials and a
khap leader, who said that the khap panchayat had not taken place.
We
have remained in touch with the family, and have spoken over the telephone or
in person to five members of the Jatav (Dalit) community in the village who
have told us that the khap panchayat had issued the order, and have spoken
about the atmosphere of fear in the village which is now preventing members of
the Dalit community from speaking out.
One
member of the community told us:
“People
are afraid. They don’t want to come forward… Jatavs are a minority here, there
are only a few of us. If they speak or they come forward, they and their family
members will be finished off.”
CASTE-BASED
DISCRIMINATION
The
family’s petition to the Supreme Court also contains several other allegations
of human rights abuses. The sisters had been living away from the village since
May 2015, when their father Dharampal Singh allegedly began receiving threats
to the family, following the elopement of his son with the woman from the
dominant caste.
Dharampal
Singh told us, “I was fearful that they [members of the Jat community] would
kill me or my family.”
The
petition to the Supreme Court includes:
A
statement made by the Jat woman to the Delhi Police on 2 May after her
elopement, in which she said that she faces threats to her life from her
relatives. An excerpt reads:
“I
will live with Ravi, otherwise I will die because I want to give birth to the
child of Ravi. Ravi’s child is in my womb. I do not want to go to my home as
I’m in danger from my family members as they will kill me, and I don’t want to
go to the home into which I was married also because those people beat me. I
want to go with Ravi. I should be allowed to go with Ravi.”
A
transcript of a recorded telephone conversation on 24 May, allegedly between
the Dalit woman’s father and the Jat woman’s uncle, in which the latter
suggests that the Dalit woman could be raped, and threatens the father against
returning to the village.
A
transcript of a recorded telephone conversation on 30 May allegedly between the
Dalit woman’s brother and a police official who says that the Dalit family’s
house has been locked up by relatives of the Jat woman.
Details
of other situations in which threats are allegedly made that the Dalit women
could be raped. A statement by the father reads:
“On
24.4.2015 the parents of girl _____ and her brother _____ along with their
other relatives came to my home and started saying that we are from Jat
community and this village is of Jats and now see we will do whatever with you
as we will not allow you to live in this village and we will take revenge of
the girl with the girl of your family and then they started frequently visiting
at my house. And now their acts have so much increased that they have now
started beating the doors of my house at village at 2-3 O’clock in the night
and they started giving threat to kill us and kidnap and commit rape of my daughters
and kill them also and they also started saying that now we will see that who
will save you and who will speak to your Chamars against our wishes, and we
will not leave him also who will speak regarding us.”
ROLE
OF THE POLICE
In
their petition and in conversations with Amnesty International India, the
family says that the local police have also been involved in harassment and
intimidation. The family says that the police had illegally detained one of
Meenakshi Kumari’s cousins in May for three days and tortured him to try to
learn the whereabouts of the couple who had eloped. An uncle was also allegedly
illegally detained.
Meenakshi’s
brother Ravi was arrested in May for alleged drug possession a day after he and
the Jat woman were handed over to the police. In a recorded telephone
conversation allegedly between Ravi’s brother and a local police official, the
official admits that Ravi had been falsely implicated, and could have faced an
even more serious charge.
The
family says that they chose to approach the Supreme Court because they felt
that the likelihood of an impartial and independent investigation by the local
police was low.
NATURE
OF KHAP PANCHAYATS
Our
petition mentions the khap panchayat, an unelected all-male village council.
Some media reports have questioned this statement, pointing out that the
‘village council’ in Sankrod, Baghpat included several women, and was headed by
a Dalit woman.
Khap
panchayats are distinct from gram panchayats, which are formally elected
administrative bodies. Khap panchayats, in contrast, are unelected bodies that
are almost always dominated by dominant caste men. Their meetings are usually
held only between members of one caste and there are usually no written records
of their proceedings.
Khap
panchayats wield immense power and hand down orders with little accountability.
In states such as Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan, families have
been known to file false cases, inflict violent punishments and even carry out
killings to protect their ‘honor’ when couples choose to elope or marry in
violation of caste norms.
In
2011, the Supreme Court of India described khap panchayats as kangaroo courts,
and observed:
“We
have in recent years heard of `Khap Panchayats’ (known as katta panchayats in
Tamil Nadu) which often decree or encourage honour killings or other atrocities
in an institutionalized way on boys and girls of different castes and religion,
who wish to get married or have been married, or interfere with the personal lives
of people. We are of the opinion that this is wholly illegal and has to be
ruthlessly stamped out.”
A
2012 Law Commission Report refers to khap panchayats as practicing ‘moral
vigilantism’. It said:
The
pernicious practice of Khap Panchayats and the like taking law into their own
hands and pronouncing on the invalidity and impropriety of…inter-caste
marriages and handing over punishment to the couple …amounts to flagrant
violation of rule of law and invasion of personal liberty of the persons affected.
It
is unlikely that members of a khap panchayat will admit to passing an illegal
order of this nature, as they could be subjected to criminal prosecution. A
Dalit man from the village told us how he came to know about the khap panchayat
order, “When the Jat community calls a panchayat, there is no question of them
calling us … No one would allow us to go there…There are a few good people from
their [Jat] community who tell us, ‘All of this is happening against you’”.
It
is crucial that the enormous amount of media attention on this case does not
distract from the issues it has raised – the realities of caste and gender
discrimination that exist in India, and the serious consequences that those who
violate these unwritten codes of conduct must face.
We
have called for a swift, full and impartial investigation into the orders
issued against the sisters, and for their safety and that of their family to be
ensured. We have no plans to stop campaigning on this case until this has
happened.
This
entry was posted in Asia and the Pacific, Prisoners and People at Risk, Women's
Rights and tagged Caste System, Caste-based Discrimination, Dalit, human
rights, India, rape, Violence against Women, women's rights by Guest Writer.
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