THE KHAIRLANJI KILLINGS

“She was raped and murdered.”
“She was Priyanka Bhotmange.”

You have read it right. The name here is Bhotmange and not Mattoo. The latter being one we more easily relate to. But in this witless “Tragedy of Errors” (set a good ten years apart from each other) the protagonists - two girls, different not just in surname, but in the classes they represented, castes they belonged to and places they came from - were joined together by their tragic denouement. Both lives were prematurely snuffed out by egotistical maniacs – a lone stalker in the case of Priyadarshini and a mob of thirty in Priyanka’s case. But while we are all aware of the nitty-gritty of the Mattoo case, the details of the other one still elude us.

Today, where we can all find solace in the fact that Priyadarshini has (finally) got justice, primarily due to the tenacity of her very brave family, the contumaciousness of the media and the large scale support of the urban Indian middle class that helped revive the once “comatose case,” I fear Priyanka may never get such a chance. Never, because it takes much more than legitimacy and fair mindedness to get justice in this country. What it takes is human endurance, unbiased law enforcement agencies and money “big enough” to last you decades and “good enough” to beat the best team of defence lawyers. However, you could have all that and still feel frustrated if your case wasn’t buttressed by the backing of the middle class. It is simple math in the times we live in. Getting justice gets that much easier if the steadfast urban educated middle class were to pick up candles and cudgels on your behalf. Half the battle is already won if you have society questioning the merits of a case as it progresses, right up till its conclusive end.

Today, we clearly recognise that the combined power of the media and the erstwhile meek middle class is a formidable force. If you are fortunate enough to have them identify with (and spare time for) your cause, then burning candles at India Gate, engaging in endless bouts of studio debates and participating in signature campaigns can help resuscitate even the most frigid of cases. Priyanka, or more aptly the lone surviving member of her family, her father, Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange, sadly doesn’t have even one of the above mentioned prerequisites that may deliver him justice. His daughter’s gruesome murder (along with his wife’s and two son’s) and the forlorn sequel that succeeds the deafening silence may well ensure that Priyanka die an anonymous death for lack of patronage and similar championing. For who’d want to waste time (and footage) on a poor dalit girl from the unknown village of Khairlanji, somewhere “near” Nagpur - but “far” enough to not get our goats or disturb our sleep.

It’s extremely comforting to see so many people come out in support of Priyadarshini Matoo, Jessica Lall, Nitish Katara and their families. It’s solely due to their collective exaction that a fresh repositioning and review of these high profile cases was possible in the first place. One simply has to flip through the ear dogged pages of history to recapitulate how a show of strength and a hundred voices has always ensured that even the most sluggish of stations perk up and take notice. But the poser that grates on my mind is “Were these the only three people to have been wronged in our country?” Every now and then we hear of women from the weaker sections of our society being raped and molested and their men dispossessed or butchered in villages not too far away from us. But because those living on the margins of our society have been wronged in perpetuity, such incidents do little to stir us into action. One can only say with some amount of certitude that, in India, it helps if the accused are people in proximity with politicians or those in power. Such cases then have a better chance at warranting a visible public outcry. Hence, how urban India chooses to lend its support, I must admit, is a phenomenon that still never fails to baffle me. But what I do get about this “Syndrome of Selective Sympathy” is that unless urban India manages to somehow identify with a cause, depending on how it may affect its fortunes in the future, it doesn’t waste time or a burning candle in your name.

Khairlanji, I’m afraid, unlike Delhi, doesn’t have an India Gate to hold candle light vigils. It doesn’t even have a dilapidated clock tower. What it has is a surfeit of upper caste perpetrators who find it easy to ravage the modesty of low caste women and, if still not satisfied, snuff their lives out with impunity. A little over a month ago (on 29th of Sept. to be precise) this is exactly what happened to the ill-fated Bhotmange household when a mob of more than thirty upper caste men, armed with axes, chains and other crude implements, broke in and dragged out Surekha Bhotmange and her 17-year-old daughter Priyanka. In the grueling hours that followed, the two were paraded naked, raped and eventually killed. Priyanka’s two brothers, aged 19 and 21, too were not spared. They were hacked to death and all their bodies unceremoniously dumped in a nearby canal. The next day, when Priyanka’s body was fished out of the water, initial photographic evidence showed rods sticking out of her genitals. Strangely, however, the observations of the postmortem report not only deny such aggravation but also the possibility of sexual assault.

In spite of the horrendous nature of the atrocities that overstepped all standards of civil comportment, the story couldn’t sustain itself for too long in the public eye. Priyanka Bhotmange, though a bright and promising young girl, was to her mischance, just another faceless dalit from the rural rustic land of India. Unfortunately, because such stories don’t make our hearts bleed, they don’t sell for too long either. Since an English speaking urbanite has a better chance at justice, the depressed and the deprived can only pray they don’t become a statistic or a figure on a graph depicting a descending trajectory of our conviction rate. As for Priyadarshini and Priyanka, it’s easy to see where the similarities and differences of their lives ended and began. However, I hope in their death, the crusade for justice does bring them together.

P.S: The edited version of this article
was published in November, 2006 in
The Hindustan Times under the title, "Remember Priyanka?"

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/remember-priyanka/story-K47ObA58SC4G6YNmQJJXiK.html