On their way back after the movie, the couple got into a bus supposedly going towards their destination. The bus had six men, drunk, possibly doped, and out to get sexual action. Oversexualised through their consistent exposure to porn, which they saw on their mobile phones, the men saw women as good for only two things -- one, to be the battered wife, maid, and mother to their kids; and two, as a sex object.
The men beat up Jyoti’s companion. Gang raped and brutalised Jyoti, and dumped them both on the street, bloody and broken. Jyoti died a few days later, with internal injuries so horrific that battle hardened journalists and cops cried just reading the report and the sheer cruelty with which she was tortured.
Jyoti Singh became a national symbol. Somehow her rape, torture, and murder, galvanised women and men across the nation to come out and demand safety, and the basic right to live and go about their lives without fear.
Arrests followed rapidly. One of the six was deemed a juvenile who not only could not stand trial because he was a few months younger than the legal age of an adult, but who is back in civilian population now. And, another committed suicide, though there are those who allege that he was murdered, leaving the remaining four to stand trial.
In the trial, and the media circus that accompanied it, Jyoti was violated again. Both lawyers for the accused, AP Singh and ML Sharma, tried to label Jyoti as someone who was asking for it. Sharma said,
"That girl was with some unknown boy who took her on a date. In our society, we never allow our girls to come out from the house after 6:30 or 7:30 or 8:30 in the evening with any unknown person."
He added that she had no business being out at night. “You are talking about man and woman as friends. Sorry, that doesn’t have any place in our society. A woman means I immediately put the sex in his eyes. We have the best culture. In our culture, there is no place for a woman."
The other lawyer, AP Singh blamed Jyoti for being out: “If very important, if very necessary, she should go outside but she should go with their family members like uncle, father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, etc. So she should not go in night hours with her boyfriend.”
He added, “If my daughter or sister engaged in pre-marital activities and disgraced herself and allowed herself to lose face and character by doing such things, I would most certainly take this sort of sister or daughter to my farmhouse, and in front of my entire family, I would put petrol on her and set her alight.“
Both Singh and Sharma seemed to be echoing the words of Mukesh, one of the rapists. He said “You can’t clap with one hand. It takes two hands to clap. A decent girl won’t roam around at 9 o’clock at night. A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy.” He has reiterated his position on honour killings, multiple times, including earlier this month on Al Jazeera.
While Mukesh, the rapist, is a barely literate bus driver, who grew up in poverty, Sharma and Singh are relatively well lettered, qualified, and have a standing with a certain kind of clientele. Their attitudes, however, towards rape and murder, seem to be remarkably similar. A view that looks at women as objects to be kept at home, and if she leaves the home, unaccompanied, then rape is what she must want.
Unfortunately, you cannot penalise people for having obnoxious views. With ML Sharma, all you can say is that he believes that women are chattel that need to be protected by men. Offensive, but not new.
Similar views are echoed across India, in our own families. One can complain about the fact that he is given airtime to promote these views, but that is about it. But, what do you do with a lawyer who seems to justify killing women, because they cross the invisible Lakshman Rekha.
In a very screwed up system, the most basic thing one can ask for is that there are lawyers who believe in the basic tenets of the Indian Constitution. That a man who says that he will commit murder if his daughter or sister had sex before marriage is a frightening prospect.
It is one thing to defend the accused. In a democratic republic, every accused has the right to a fair trial and entitled to competent legal representation. It is another being an apologist for rape and murder, with the justification that ‘women deserve it’.
I think we will all have a collective heart attack if a lawyer who has publicly stated that India’s boundaries aren’t sacrosanct would defend terrorists; I am not quite sure why it should be any different for someone who wants to kill women who choose to live their lives, the way they see fit.
(Harini Calamur is a writer, teacher and film-maker. She tweets at @calamur)
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