Long before the Oscar-nomination, a father’s fight for justice for his daughter

A crumbling akhra (raised platform) built around a massive fig tree in a Jharkhand village is the last place one would expect to overhear a discussion on To Kill A Tiger, an Oscar-nominated documentary made by Indian-origin filmmaker Nisha Pahuja.

Though the locals have only seen clips from the documentary, either online or on WhatsApp, they cannot fathom why the story of a 13-year-old’s gangrape by three of her relatives in their tiny village in May 2017 would interest an international audience.

Besides casual discussions on sunny weekdays, the akhra also doubles as the spot for all important village-level meetings. But for the father of the victim, now 20, it is a grim reminder of the marathon meetings held to “negotiate the problem” of his daughter’s gangrape at a relative’s wedding late on May 9, 2017, in the village.

The spot in the Jharkhand village where meetings took place between the families of the victim and the accused, and the village council members. (Express Photo by Abhishek Angad)

Breaking down while speaking to The Indian Express, the victim’s father, 45, recalled, “My daughter said she would prefer dying over settling the matter.”

The father, who is a daily-wage mason, said the accused were related to them — two of them were his daughter’s cousins and one nephew, all in their early 20s then.

He adds, “All those relationships died that day. I remember how shocked she was when she returned home that night. It was our turn to get shocked when she told us what they had done to her.”

Though the trio were convicted to 25 years of rigorous imprisonment on July 18, 2018, the family’s trials — which started with filing of the first information report (FIR) and refusing to “settle” the matter at the akhra — took longer.

According to court records, one of the accused and the teenager were dancing together at the wedding, after which he dragged her to a secluded spot and raped her. Before the two other accused took turns to rape her, court records state, they helped him hold her down. The records add that the victim’s shouts for help were drowned out by the loud music playing at the wedding.

A village-level meeting was convened the next morning, on May 10, 2017, at the akhra, her father recalls.

“I was told to marry my daughter to one of the accused during that meeting. Even if I had agreed to this unreasonable demand, what about the other two accused? Would they have treated my daughter with respect? What made me really angry was that no one cared about the crime itself,” he says.

Incensed, he went straight to the local Police Station, where it took him five hours to lodge an FIR under Section 376D (gang-rape) of the Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. A medical examination was done the following day. As per court records, it confirmed that “this seems to be a case of sexual assault”.

Poster of To Kill a Tiger

Over seven days that followed, the father said, the accused and some villagers tried every trick in the book to make the case go away. “I remember them telling me that they could walk three steps, while I could walk just one — implying that they were thrice as strong as me. But I refused to give up.”

Shrijan Foundation, a non-government organisation, happened to be working in the village around that time.

Puja, the NGO’s secretary, told The Indian Express, “We were working on gender sensitivity issues in the village. The director (documentary filmmaker Pahuja) was shooting our programme when we heard about the incident. She ended up shooting the documentary after that.”

One of the villagers claimed that To Kill A Tiger, which has been nominated under the ‘best documentary feature’ category, includes scenes from the “settlement” meetings too.

Back at the akhra, locals claim to have a “faint” recollection of the negotiations that took place between the families of the victim and the accused, and the village council members nearly seven years ago.

While victim blaming was a common refrain among the locals, some others, perhaps emboldened by the fact that the accused are in jail, remarked, “Galat to hua tha (What happened was wrong).”

During the trial, when the defence submitted that there was no eyewitness, the court had said that “…it is known to every one that such offences are usually committed under secrecy and thus asking for corroboration from testimony of eye witnesses will be an act of insult towards the victim…”.

For the father, the trial process was a “punishment” not just for him but his entire family, especially his younger daughter and two young sons.

“I must have gone to the court at least 100 times, by auto or bus or on my own motorcycle. I mortgaged my land and even took loans to fight the case. I am yet to repay the debt of Rs 5 lakh,” he says.

Stating that his daughter is currently studying in Class 12 in the city, he adds that she talks to him sometimes “but never discusses the incident”.

To a query on whether he was worried about the documentary since his face is visible both in the film and one of the posters, he says, “I have not watched the documentary so far. Even if I end up earning a bad name, I want to ensure that no one else suffers like my daughter.”