Satna At dusk, a frail-looking girl walks slowly wincing in pain towards a handpump about 300 meters away from her house in Madhya Pradesh’s Satna district, carrying two plastic containers. Her aunt asks her to hurry up, as they have to return home to cook before it gets dark.
Barely a month ago, the 13-year-old girl, bleeding and semi-nude, was seen begging for help in the streets of Ujjain after being brutally raped by an autorickshaw driver. She had run away from her home after a tiff with her grandfather and reached Ujjain. After medical treatment at a Ujjain hospital, she returned home on October 12.
Ujjain’s apathy to the victim was evident in videos that emerged of her seeking help, but back home, there is not much sympathy for her, especially among upper castes, who continue to discriminate against Dalits like her. Her family and other Dalits have to use a separate hand pump and there is no electricity supply to her Dalit basti. “That is how we have been living here for decades,” said her grandfather. The family belongs to the scheduled caste Dohar community considered untouchable in Satna
Rape survivor’s grandfather regrets his own role in the sordid affair; had he not scolded her on September 24 morning she would not have left, he says. When he went to lodge a complaint with Jatwara police station, about two km from the village, that evening, the police personnel asked him to search for her himself. An FIR was lodged almost a day after he complained.
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