Her Story

Bhanwari,55,is aware that the guidelines are in the news,as aware as she is about what these still lack. It took the December 16,2012,Delhi gangrape for the recommendations to take the shape of an Act. Seven months later,the rules are yet to be formulated. “Have the guidelines been implemented?” Bhanwari asks. “No? Then what is the point?”

However,even she knows that that is only partly true. In these parts,Bhanwari’s struggle has made her a symbol for justice. The same villagers who once ostracised her after her rape,and more importantly for fighting back,come to her seeking help.

Early in the morning of December 6,Sitaram Koli and Jagdish Bairwa,who even today in the presence of upper caste men pretend to have nothing to do with her,stand at her doorstep,seeking help in land grab cases.

Late December 5 night,Bhanwari had received another call for help. Women had phoned her up to complain that Meena community members in nearby Gadoli had beaten them up while they were working on an MNREGA project,because the village voted for a Dalit candidate in the Assembly elections held on December 1.

Bhanwari forwarded the complaint to activists in Jaipur and,at the break of dawn on December 6,set out to meet the women. At a shout by her in Gadoli,the women crowded around her,narrating the incident,as the men stayed on the fringes. The women took Bhanwari to a verandah later and showed her their bruises.

Bhanwari admits incidents such as these remind her of that fateful evening of September 22,1992. Her buffalo had not eaten all day following the death of its newborn calf,and hoping to coax it with fresh fodder,Bhanwari and her husband Mohan Lal had set out for their 1.8-bigha field across the houses of wealthy Gurjjars. Five men of the dominant Gurjjar and Brahmin communities in the village had accosted her that day,thrashed Mohan Lal and at least two had raped her. 

There was a reason Bhanwari attracted the assault. An illiterate from the Kumhar community,she had been working as a saathin,or a grassroots worker,for the Women’s Development Programme of the state government since 1985.

In 1992,a month before the Akha Teej festival,when mass marriages take place in Rajasthan,she had started going around the village telling people not to hold child marriages. According to internal reports,41 child marriages were slated in Jaipur district for that day in April,including some in Bhanwari’s village. She had informed a local official who,in turn,told the district collector. Notifications were issued to all the sub-divisional magistrates,and police were informed.

This stopped a wealthy Gurjjar,Ram Karan,from marrying off his nine-month-old baby. The wealthier and more powerful Gurjjars felt Bhanwari had to be “taught a lesson”. Gyarsa Gurjjar (then 50),Ram Karan’s uncle,two of his brothers,Ram Sukh and Badri Gurjjar (all in their 30s),and a Brahmin accomplice,Shravan Sharma (55),waylaid Bhanwari. While Gyarsa and Badri allegedly raped her,others pinned down Mohan Lal and Bhanwari,but all are named for rape.

When she finally got up after the assault,sometime in the evening,Mohan Lal suggested the two of them jump into a nearby rivulet. Bhanwari refused. After ensuring that their children,who were between the ages of 6 and 16 then,were fine,the two went to the police station in Bassi,20 km from Bhateri. The nearest one was 8 km away but it had a Gurjjar in-charge.

However,the police station in-charge at Bassi too refused to lodge a case. Bhanwari then headed to the Gandhinagar mahila thana (women’s police station) in Jaipur and spent the night there. After over 24 hours,an FIR was lodged and the sub-divisional magistrate ordered a medical examination.

When Bhanwari reached SMS Hospital though,she realised that the test was only to determine her age and not to examine the rape charges. She rushed back,but by then the court was closed for the day and it was only the next day that she procured another order for medical tests. It was after 52 hours that Bhanwari was finally tested.

Many lessons would later be drawn from her ordeal,including the fact that her first interrogation was held at a tea stall in public,where she was asked questions about the “experience”. The authorities remembered they had to seize her ghagra (skirt) as evidence and asked her to take it off right there. Mohan Lal pulled out his saafa (turban) for something to cover his wife.

Later,when she was asked to settle the matter out of court and accept money,she stood her ground and asked for an unconditional apology in front of the entire village. They tried to convince Mohan Lal next,but he insisted,“I have seen it happen in front of me. I could not protect her dignity. How can I not stand by her?”

Right from then chief minister Bhairon Singh Shekhawat to the local sub-inspector,all suspected Bhanwari’s story. Shekhawat is said to have told a senior bureaucrat,“I have been a police-wallah and I can tell just by hearing the victim whether she is lying or not.”

What kept her going,Bhanwari says,was the support she received from women across the state,who gathered in thousands for protests. Unlike now,there was no social media or TV channels to drive them out,but they came.

Exactly a month after the incident,on October 22,1992,5,000 women,activists and volunteers from villages and cities converged metres away from the Rajasthan Secretariat,seeking to meet CM Shekhawat and demanding a CBI probe. Police lathicharged them,further igniting fury,and the protesters broke through the Secretariat gates.

***

Kavita Srivastava of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties,was the general secretary of NGO Vishakha then. It was a small news item that appeared in a local Hindi daily that first caught their attention. They got in touch with the local officials they knew and soon got to know Bhanwari’s story.

They met her almost soon after,and took up her fight. Recounting their struggle,Srivastava says: “There was no stopping. The agitations continued in the face of government apathy. What shocked us were the several counter-agitations led by political groups abusing Bhanwari.”

With the public outrage not showing any signs of dying down,the case was handed over to the CBI in January 1993. The chargesheet was filed later that year on September 26 and,by early 1994,all the five accused were arrested. Five judges and 182 hearings later,on November 15,1995,the District and Sessions Court (Jaipur Rural) acquitted the five accused citing lack of evidence and backing the defence counsel’s arguments — including that “an uncle cannot perform such a sexual act in front of his nephew”,“inter-caste gangs do not form for a crime”,“where rape is unheard of in rural Rajasthan,gangrape is next to impossible”.

The CBI went in appeal to the high court in February 1996,and the government of Rajasthan this time filed to be an intervener in the case.

Realising that Bhanwari’s ordeal stemmed from the work she did as part of a government initiative,women’s rights activists decided to take up her case as an example for the need to protect working women from sexual harassment.

Srivastava recalls the nights and the countless cups of tea that kept them awake as women and human rights activists,researchers,lawyers,scholars all came together to draft some recommendations,in Jaipur and Delhi. Finally,together,they filed a PIL in the Supreme Court under Vishakha and Others Vs State of Rajasthan and Others.

“Instead of protecting her interests,the state government was in denial mode because an acknowledgement of the incident would mean admitting that the government had jeopardised her safety. They would then have to own up responsibility,which they flatly refused to by dismissing the entire case. As a government servant,Bhanwari was following a government order and the incident therefore took place in what can rightfully be called her workplace,” says Renuka Pamecha of Women’s Rehabilitation Group,one of the five petitioners in the case.

In August 1997,the apex court took cognisance of the case and delivered the historic Vishakha guidelines that held that sexual harassment of women at the workplace,which is against their dignity,is violative of Articles 14,15 (1) and 21 of the Constitution. Sexual harassment,in other words,was held as a violation of fundamental rights.

The Supreme Court observed,“The immediate cause for the filing of this writ petition is an incident of alleged brutal gangrape of a social worker in a village of Rajasthan… The incident reveals the hazards to which a working woman may be exposed and the depravity to which sexual harassment can degenerate; and the urgency for safeguards by an alternative mechanism in the absence of legislative measures.”

The guidelines were named Vishakha,on the Jaipur-based NGO that was listed right at top,though it fought the case with four other petitioners — Women’s Rehabilitation Group,Rajasthan Voluntary Health Association and two NGOs from New Delhi,Kali for Women and Jagori.

The passage of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention,Prohibition and Redressal) Act,2010,this year in April by both the Houses of Parliament is seen by them as a victory of their protracted battle. The Act includes many provisions of the Vishakha guidelines,that first called for the formulation of “a code of conduct for work place”. Building on the guidelines,the Act calls for the formation of an internal complaints committee and a local complaints committee at the district level. 

But,as Pamecha and Srivastava point out,the Vishakha guidelines are flouted by a majority of the government as well as private organisations. “Several organisations still do not have a committee to look into the complaints,there is no proper monitoring,no NGO representation in several cases,” says Pamecha. 

“Even if committees are formed,they tend to work on case-specific basis. The idea was to have a regular functional committee for information dissemination,to provide basic facilities for women and to work towards prevention of sexual harassment rather than only for redressal,” adds Bharat,present general secretary,Vishakha Women Education and Research,that has now diversified into issues of domestic violence and also advocates men’s rights. 

“What has changed over the years and can be called our biggest achievement is that the victim is believed and the case is taken forward on the premise that her word is the truth,unlike 21 years ago when Bhanwari’s biggest battle was to prove she was not lying,” Srivastava says.

Awarded Rs 1 lakh in 1994 for her courage and commitment,Bhanwari was invited to be a part of the UN Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Earlier this year,on International Women’s Day in March,she delivered a lecture in Bangalore.

Bhanwari still works as a saathin and finds it hard to make both ends meet on her paltry income of Rs 2,100 a month. Her husband,a potter,has few buyers for his products since the incident in 1992. 

Except their elder daughter,their three other children are all well-educated and work. Daughter Rameshwari has done post-graduation and teaches in a school in Jaipur.

Incidentally,the high court,with a pendency of over two decades,is yet to hear Bhanwari on the appeal against the acquittal of her five alleged rapists. Gyarsa and Ram Karan are dead and the other three accused consider the case closed.

Bhanwari,however,won’t let that happen. “We will win. Why not? Just let the hearing come,” she insists.

Vishakha guidelines,1997

* Sexual harassment includes such unwelcome sexually determined behaviour as physical contact and advances; a demand or request for sexual favours; sexually coloured remarks; showing pornography; any other unwelcome physical,verbal or non- verbal conduct of sexual nature.

* Sexual harassment as defined at the work place should be notified,published and circulated.

* Where such conduct amounts to a specific offence under law,the employer should initiate appropriate action by complaining with the appropriate authority.

* Victims of sexual harassment should have the option to seek transfer of the perpetrator or their own transfer.

* An appropriate mechanism should be created for redressal

of the complaint.

Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace,2012

* Employers should constitute internal complaints committee,local complaints committee (at the district level).

* A victim may make,in writing,a complaint of sexual harassment at workplace to the committees within three months of the date of the alleged incident.

* The committees,before initiating an inquiry,and at the request of the victim,may take steps to settle the matter between her and the respondent through conciliation.

* The committees may recommend transfer of the victim or the respondent to any other workplace,as well as grant leave to the victim up to a period of three months.

* Employers must make available such information to the committees as they may require; and must provide assistance to the woman if she chooses to file a complaint under the law.