Areesh
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Despite national outrage over Indias deadliest communal violence in a decade that killed 52 and rendered about 50000 people homeless, even 13 days after the FIRs of gangrapes during the riots were filed, the accused are roaming free with the police making no effort to arrest them.
Although investigators are yet to question any of the men named in the five FIRs of gangrape, TEHELKA traced five people accused in two different cases. All the five rape cases registered so far have come from Muzaffarnagars Fugana village bordering Shamli district. The horror stories began surfacing from 22 September onwards as the police were sifting through the hundreds of complaints of riot victims living in relief camps.
At Fugana, however, unlike a few other Hindu-dominated villages from where hundreds of men have fled and gone into hiding, the rape-accused are present in the village and carrying on with their normal life. Located at a distance of nearly 40 kilometres from Muzaffarnagar district headquarters and just about 2 kilometres from the Fugana police station, the village has a population of 26000, of which Muslims number only 2500. Most of them work as labourers in the fields of Hindu Jats and Brahmins. While Jats constitute nearly 70 percent of the Hindu population, the rest are Brahmins, Harijans and other Scheduled Castes.
According to the victims of the riots, on the afternoon of 8 September, hundreds of Jats and some members of other Hindu caste attacked a cluster of Muslim houses in the villages Dhobi Mohalla a day after Jats were attacked and killed at Jauli village, some 50 kilometres away in Muzaffarnagar district. Besides rape, two deaths were also reported from Fugana village and all the Muslim houses were set on fire.
In her FIR (a copy of which is with TEHELKA) Ayesha (name changed), a woman in her forties, has accused five men from her village Joginder, Sunil, Ramesh, Ram Kumar and Vijendra of raping her on the afternoon of 8 September. Her house, along other Muslim dwellings in the Dhobi mohalla of Fugana village, was set on fire by the rioters.The police received her complaint from a relief camp where she had taken shelter along with her husband and other family members. Following this, an FIR was registered at the Fugana police station on 25 September.
TEHELKA first traced Joginder (35) in the village. He turned out to be the son of the village pradhan Tham Singh. He claimed that the rape charges against him were fabricated: I had scolded her in public almost two months back for she was after my life to get her a Below Poverty Line (BPL) card. She was persisting on getting the card made then and there and I told her to wait for the right time. He explains this as the reason for his being framed. Asked about the sequence of events leading to the victims family leaving the village, Joginder, a class 12 dropout who is involved in farming, said he didnt know the exact reason: There must have been some miscreants who created disturbance.
Sunil (46), another accused named in the FIR, said that he had known the woman and her family for years and there was no question of him raping her: We were neighbors. I saw the family take their belongings to a safer place. However, there was no rape as claimed by her. Asked if he knew why her family had to leave village, he said, I do not know. All Muslims began leaving the village after the 7 September incident of the murder of Jats at Jauli village.
Ramesh (40), a farmer who is also named in the FIR, told TEHELKA that he didnt even know the woman: My house is at least 40 houses away from hers. I was in the fields at the time of the alleged rape.
Another accused named in the gang rape of the woman, Devendra Sharma (48), whose name mistakenly appears as Vijendra in the FIR, said he was in Shamli on 8 Septemer: I was not in the village. I had taken my son to a doctor in Shamli that day to get him treated for a bullet injury in his leg. He claimed that his son had been injured by a bullet while returning from the Hindu mahapanchayat at Nangla Mandaur on 7 September.
It was not possible to meet the fifth accused in the case, Ram Kumar, as he was not preset in the village. However, the residents of Fugana confirmed that he was not hiding. Village pradhan Tham Singh (60), an accused himself in the gang-rape of another woman, said, There is no question of anyone hiding. People have gone out in the fields or elsewhere for work. If the police come to arrest us, the whole village will court arrest. The women of the village and the cattle too will join us. Do you think I will rape a woman at this age? There is a political conspiracy to defame the village. We have not burnt Muslims houses or killed anyone. It surely was some miscreants. Singh and the other four accused told TEHELKA that they had not been questioned by the police so far.
When TEHELKA visited the complainant woman at her relief camp, she accused the five men of threatening to kill her before taking turns to rape her. On being asked why she didnt report the incident earlier, she replied, I was too afraid to go the police station to register the case. So when the police came to the camp on the District Magistrates instructions, I submitted my complaint.
A senior officer of the Special Investigation Cell (SIC), now tasked with probing the riots, said on condition of anonymity that they had received details of the rape case from the local police till as late as 5 October. Our Investigation Officers (IOs) are reading through the FIRs. They will soon start the investigations and question the accused, he added.
Fugana, Lisarh, Lank and Bahawadi are the four villages that bore the worst of the Muzaffarnagar communal riots. The Fugana police station under which the villages fall reported 16 of the total 52 killings during the 7-9 September violence.
[Exclusive] Muzaffarnagar Riots: Rape accused roam freely as victim hides in refugee camp | Tehelka.com
