When the World came to Banda

Inside one of the low huts in this village of 150 houses and about a thousand people,a young girl finishes a hurried meal before gearing up to recount her ordeal. Her father calls out to her,Come out. Tumhare darshan ke liye koi aaya hai.

The girl walks towards a wooden bench where,over the last few days,she has routinely sat and told her story. Sent to Banda jail on December 15,she was kept there for a month on a complaint by BSP MLA Purushottam Naresh Dwivedis son for stealing a cellphone and money. The girl,who had run away from the MLAs house two days earlier,alleges she was raped by the MLA and his men and the theft charges were just a cover-up.

I was raped by the MLA,his people and his chaprasi. He wanted me to marry his chaprasi but I refused. Even the MLAs wife used to say she is fed up with him. One day,after I was raped,I ran away from his house but the MLAs men caught up with me the next day and accused me of theft. I later told jail authorities what had happened and they began forcing me to change my statement, she says.

After sustained media pressure and protests by Opposition parties in Uttar Pradesh,the girl was finally released on January 15 on the orders of the Allahabad High Court and entrusted to her fathers care.

While perhaps it was the Oppositions combined campaign that got the girl out of prison,they are now going all out to win her loyalty. The Samajwadi Party was the first to jump into the fray. Their womens wing came visiting and gave the girl and her family over Rs 2 lakha photograph of them,sitting with the girl holding wads of cash,appeared prominently in local newspapers. Congress MLA Vivek Kumar Singh,who says he was instrumental in getting the girl out of prison,followed a couple of days later with a cheque of Rs 1 lakh.

Syed Imran Ali,district president of the Samajwadi Party in Banda says,We are not playing politics here. We are not wooing the girl to join our party. Why should we? We have enough workers,why would we want a girl who knows nothing about politics?

But he says he is wary of the BSP taking the girl into their fold and making her change her statement. We have information that the BSP wants to take her to Behenji in Lucknow. We wont let that happen. We have our men all over the village,they keep an eye on who comes and goes.

Which is why,the police say,they have this elaborate bandobast in place when two securitymen would have been enough to protect her. What will we do if some political people whisk her away, says a policeman.

The girl,meanwhile,says she is scared the MLAs men will come back for her. I want my family to be given a house in Banda city. There will be better security for me there and,of course,there are better facilities in the city, she says. And I would like to study further, says the 17-year-old who has studied till class II.

Her father Achche Lal agrees. I was beaten up by the MLAs men. I am scared. Will they leave me alive, asks Achche Lal,who oscillates between fear of the past and optimism for the future. Ive kept all the money we have been given now in the bank. I am not going to fritter it away. Ill spend it on my daughters wedding,on getting my mortgaged land back and maybe Ill buy some land, says Achche Lal,who mortgaged two of his three bighas for

Rs 20,000 several years ago. My wife died 12 years ago. I had to look after the children and could not go out to work. He supplements his income by selling gutka in the village,making about Rs 25 a day and by working as a labourer.

In these parts,where cash is scarce and opportunities to make money even scarcer,financial matters can be confusing. Achche Lal had reportedly asked the government for a compensation of Rs 50 lakh. I didnt,some netas advised me to ask for that amount. But how much do you think I should have asked for? he says.

Hes also confused over whether he should continue with the political party he has been associated with since the days of Kanshi Ram. I used to give chanda (donations) to the BSP. Do you want to see the receipts, he asks. I used to campaign for the party,I even campaigned for Purushottam Dwivedi, he says,breaking into a song he used to sing at BSP rallies that speaks of how the BSP government would end the goonda raj. How would I have known the goondas would turn on me one day? Ab saari leaderi chhoot gayi. Now I am only bothered about my life.

Political parties havent approached me but,of course,leaders are now calling themselves my daughters mamas and phoophas. Should I stick on with the BSP? he asks.

Of the four MLAs from Banda,Dwivedi is from the BSP,two are from the Samajwadi Party and the fourth,Vivek Kumar Singh,is from the Congress. But Banda is where three of BSPs heavyweight ministersNaseemuddin Siddiqui,Babu Singh Kushwaha and Daddu Prasadcome from.

BSP MLA Dwivedi,whose family reportedly has liquor and construction contracts in the area,was a students union leader years ago at the Atarra Degree College before standing for the last elections under Mayawatis Dalit-Brahmin alliance. His popularity was never high and now,the Opposition is confident this incident will take away both the Brahmin and lower caste vote from Mayawati.

It was to Dwivedi that Achche Lal had turned to for help when his daughter went missing on October 27 last year. She says she was kidnapped from her aunts place by a resident of Pathra village some 35 km away and kept there till Dwivedis men found her and took her to his place in Atarra on December 8. I thought she will work in their house and be safe. How did I know this will happen, says her father.

A few kilometres away from Shahbazpur lies Lacchapurva village in Madhya Pradeshs Panna district. Villages on both sides of the dusty border share a common narrative of parched land,fear of crops failing and its accompanying problems. UPs Banda and MPs Panna are part of the dry,rocky region of Bundelkhand,once historic,now part of the poorest and most backward districts of India.

It was from this village that the girl first went missing in October. Today,there is no one at her aunts house,except her cousin,19-year-old Chuniya. The others are all out at the river to get reeds for the ropes they make. The cousins family,like Achche Lal and his family,are Kewats,an OBC community,who usually live in villages around the river and make a living out of fishing,making ropes out of reeds and growing vegetables on the banks of rivers. Chuniya is reluctant to talk but finally says her cousin had come for a few days some months ago and disappeared one night. She is not sure how but says there were two women in the neighbouring house who would call her cousin on her cellphone and call her out occasionally.

Some 35 km away,in a lusher part of the area,is Pathra village whose resident Rajju Patel allegedly kidnapped the victim. Patel told the police that the girl had come with him willingly,but the girl denies it,saying she was found in the village,tied and gagged.

Patels house is practically the last in Pathra,past the village well,the neem tree and many winding lanes and is perched at a height,overlooking vast stretches of fields. His mother Sundriya is home but says her son Rajju is away at an aunts place. Yes,the girl stayed here, she says. But she wont say why her son brought her to their place. Her chacha stays in this village too so she used to stay with them and us. In fact,the MLAs men took her away from their house. We never locked her up or anything. She used to work at home,go out to get chara (fodder). You can ask all these people around, she says,pointing to inquisitive neighbours. Called to testify,the neighbours suddenly turn vague. One says she didnt see the girl because she was away during that time,another claims she is deaf.

While the MLAs involvement in this case ensured attention,villages in the region abound with similar cases,of dabangs (strongmen) assaulting and kidnapping girls. Similar cases have taken place earlier in other villages. In this particular case,the Opposition came together and the girl got justice but the challenge now is to see whether she will be able to stand on her own feet and think independently, says Raja Bhaiya,who runs an NGO,Vidya Dham Samiti,in Atarra. Raja Bhaiya says the girls father Achche Lal had told him of his daughters plight when she was jailed and he alerted the media about it.

The challenges in this region are many: poverty,illiteracy,low status of women, he says pointing to the bare stony hills of Nehri,where women break stones to make a living. It takes them about 15 days to break enough stones to fill a trolley that will fetch them Rs 1,500. Since land holdings in the area are small and the rains mostly missing,this is another way to supplement income. In the last few years,there has been very little rain in Bundelkhand,pushing the debt-ridden farmers further into debt.

And this year,the talk is already veering around its next disaster: fields of arhar destroyed in the frost,the dry,withered crops whispering ominously in the wind.

Back in Banda,city SP Anil Das says the police did whatever they could have done in this case. But I cant comment on the case because an investigation is on. I have said whatever I had to say to the Crime Branch-CID, he says.

Meanwhile,Banda jail,where the victim was imprisoned for a month and from where began a series of events that led to the arrest of the BSP MLA and his accomplices and the dismissal of four officials,including three policemen,in connection with the registration of the theft case against the girl,is outwardly a picture of calm.

Alongside the colonial jail built in 1860,lie the residential quarters of jail staff. In one of them lives Shahjahan Begum,the class IV jail employee who says the victim had told her of her ordeal the day she was brought to the prison and she had informed the jailor but they didnt do anything about it. When I was asked to take her to the womens barrack,I saw she was limping and her clothes were soaked in blood. I too have daughters,so I asked her out of concern if the policemen had beaten her too hard and then she told me what had happened to her. This is what I told the CB-CID too though I was told by jail authorities to change my statement. Now,the jail authorities are troubling me and are calling me indisciplined, says Shahjahan Begum,who has been working in Banda jail for four years. I am scared my job will go. The girl has got justice,now I want justice too, she says.