Highlighting the obscene women’s rights violations still proceeding in India despite progress, The Washington Post chronicled a heartbreaking story of an unnamed girl from India—who is maybe 13, her family is unsure of her exact age—who was punished for being raped by her own father.
One night in January, the girl was sleeping in her bed, snuggled-up tight next to her seven-year-old sister. Her father came home drunk off some local hooch, put his hand over her mouth and raped her. Once the incident got out—not by the little girl, she was too scared to say a word—the elders in the village council saw fit to sentence her to five “sticks” worth of whipping, since it was “her fault.” After each of the five sticks break, her penance would be paid.
The girl’s father received what equates to a $67 fine; he was also whipped.
The Post recounts the demoralizing scene of the whipping:
The teenage girl, dressed in pink, sits in the dirt before six community elders.
In a scene captured on a cellphone video, one of the men wags his finger angrily at her. He rages: This girl must be punished.
A villager ties her waist with rope, holding the other end, and lifts a tree branch into the air. She bows her head. The first lash comes, then another, then another. Ten in all. She lets out a wail.
Eventually the crowd starts murmuring, “Enough, enough,” although nobody moves to stop the beating. Finally, the man throws down his stick. It’s over.
The little girl, punished for being a victim of incestuous rape, has never spent a day in a classroom, never cracked open a book at a teacher’s behest, never giggled with friends on a playground. The girl, instead, spends her days doing chores and cooking, filling the role her mother once had before she passed. On top of that load, she also works for her father, performing in his acrobatic show.
“It did not hurt me, because they beat me very lightly,” the girl told The Post.
“I asked them to beat me because I was at fault,” she added, now crying. “The fault was I did not tell anyone about this at home. I told them my father just held my hand. That was my mistake.”
The girl is under the impression that if she only told the council about her father raping her earlier, she wouldn’t have deserved a beating. But according to a witness at the scene of the whipping, the girl was blamed for enticing her father into raping her.
“They said it was the girl’s fault. That the father was drunk and he was not in his senses,” a witness relayed to The Post. “I got angered at the whole thing. How could a girl invite such an act? The panch said, ‘You’re useless, you’re the culprit.’ She was crying.”
The witness “took his evidence to the police, who later arrested all seven members of the council, charging them with conspiracy, extortion and assault. The father was held on charges of child abuse.”
Such horrific village “punishments” are not uncommon, despite some advancement in the country with regard to human rights. Village councils are notorious for their inhumane treatment of women and girls, even sentencing gang rape on girls who date outside of their caste or whipping rape victims, as seen here.
The little girl has since undergone a medical evaluation, was interviewed by a female officer and has received a “small amount” of monetary compensation from a government victims fund.
