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<\/a>\nLakh Bawdi, a village in Uttar Pradesh\u2019s Shamli district, 20 km from Muzaffarnagar town, is surrounded on three sides by harvest-ready fields of sugarcane as high as the average Indian, and a pond on the fourth. The joke in north India is that there is no better place to hide an abducted person than in a harvest-ready sugarcane field.
\nThis harvesting season, however, the cane fields in Lakh Bawdi are throwing up tales infinitely more sordid. Like the partially decomposed, half-naked body of a woman found recently. It won\u2019t be the first\u2014more corpses will emerge as the harvesting season progresses.<\/p>\n
Lakh Bawdi was among the villages most affected by the sectarian violence in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts in September, the others being Lisad, Phugana, Kutba-Kutbi, Kirana, Budhana and Bahawdi.
\nIt\u2019s a scene etched firmly in Abid Khan\u2019s mind. \u201cIt was 7.30 in the morning,\u201d recalls the 35-year-old from Lakh Bawdi. \u201cA group of young men stopped outside our house and asked us to run away if we wanted to stay alive. We ran to Billu Pra\u00addhan\u2019s house for help.\u201d He is referring to Sudhir Kumar, the elected head of the village, better known as Billu Pradhan.<\/p>\n
Lakh Bawdi has a total voting population of 9,500; most of the village\u2019s 1,200 Muslims live beyond the fields, in an area loca\u00adlly called pallipaar, working as agricultural labourers, carpenters, washermen, butchers, tailors. Sugarcane farming, the primary occupation here, is the preserve\u2014and the privilege\u2014of the land-owning Hindu (and a handful of Muslim) Jats.<\/p>\n
Billu Pradhan\u2019s is a sprawling mansion. We are constantly asked \u201cnot to leave\u201d the pucca road while seeking directions to it. The road\u2019s fairly new, the only metalled one in the village, and ends at the pradhan\u2019s house.<\/p>\n
Billu Pradhan\u2019s house has a well-manicured garden; nea\u00adtly trimmed rose plants line its entrance. Three tractor tro\u00adlleys are parked to the left, five buffaloes are tied on the right. The building has a separate visitor\u2019s room, with charpoys and hukkahs\u2014markers of Jat identity. There\u2019s a big courtyard in the centre, the one Abid is talking about.<\/p>\n Around 30 people, including Abid\u2019s mother and other women from the village, had come here that morning. Abid himself, along with 50 others, including his grandfather and uncle, had taken the route to safety the pradhan had sugges\u00adted. Except that a mob awaited them there. \u201cMy grandfather and uncle were killed in front of my eyes. Me, my father and other family members ran into the sugarcane fields to hide,\u201d Abid recalls. Frantic, he\u2019d cal\u00adled the police on the mobile. \u201cThey arrived, but only at 12.30 pm, four hours after everything was over. Around 80 people from my village had been killed by then,\u201d he says. They found Abid\u2019s grandfather\u2019s body on September 8 itself; his mother\u2019s naked and mutilated body was found a day later, in a store heaped with dung cakes. That very day, Abid left for the makeshift camp in Loni in Ghaziabad district, 40 km from the national capital, along with the rest of the family members.<\/p>\n It may be difficult to corroborate the number of dead Abid quo\u00adtes, but testimonials of several refugees from the vill\u00adage, now in the 16 relief camps in Shamli and Muzaffarnagar districts, leave no doubt of the gruesomeness they encountered.<\/p>\n It\u2019s raining the evening we reach the Idgah camp in Kandhla in Shamli district. A town dominated mostly by Mus\u00adlims, the refugee camp is being supported largely by donations from locals. Several heaps of donated clothes lie soaked in muddy pools in the compound of the mosque as we enter. Over 12,000 people from the riot-affected villages have taken refuge here. When the rooms in the madrassa couldn\u2019t accommodate them, tents were set up. Except that when the rains came, water leaked through the tents and forced people to stuff themselves in the madrassa\u2019s corridors.<\/p>\n Women occupy the first and ground floors. Sitting with a group of old women is Shabana, a thirtysomething from Lakh Bawdi. The left side of her face is dominated by a giant black-and-blue bru\u00adise, and she sits there, medicines given by the camp doctor in hand, the women around her exhorting her to take them. What happe\u00adned? \u201cMy house was burnt, three buffaloes were burnt too and my two sons are missing,\u201d she says, in a tired and practised answer. What\u2019s her name, what are her sons\u2019 names, what happened to her and how did she esc\u00adape? Again, the same mechanical answer. \u201cMy buffaloes were burnt too.\u201d Shabana is too traumatised to provide any immediate answers. After a full hour of reassurances and demonstra\u00adted empathy, she recounts what happened to her on September 8.<\/p>\n They first beat them with batons, then stripped them and brutally sodomised them. The men were stripped and simply chopped into pieces. Shabana and several others were thrown out, naked, an hour later. She and other women were rescued in the trolleys Haji Wajid Hasan, chairman of the municipal corporation of the Kandhla block, sent off to the neighbouring villages. \u201cThey didn\u2019t have clothes,\u201d says Khurshida, a woman from Kan\u00addhla. \u201cNone at all.\u201d Locals like her collected clothes from the neighbourhood that very evening. Shabana\u2019s two sons, Tahir, a student of Class 5, and Shahid, who was in Class 2, are still missing. It has been three months.<\/p>\n \u201cHindi songs blared on loudspeakers as they raped us. Dhols too were playing. Two men held me, biting me everywhere. Three then raped me.\u201d<\/p>\n Shabana\u2019s, though, isn\u2019t the only harrowing tale. Sabra, in her late 40s, recounts the same nightmare as her 12-year-old dau\u00adghter Saju listens on. She too has come to Idgah camp from Lakh Bawdi. \u201cMy husband Ajiman and his first wife Almiyat, who was also my elder sister, along with me and my three daughters, including Saju, were in Billu Pradhan\u2019s house that morning. My elder son had asked us to stay there while he went to arra\u00adnge a vehicle for us.\u201d Sabra was married to Ajiman 10 years after his first marriage because her elder sister could not bear children. She worked at the neighbouring brick kiln.<\/p>\n \u201cMy husband was old and a tuberculosis patient,\u201d she tells me. \u201cWe thought Billu Pra\u00addhan had been the head of the village five times and would help us.\u201d Ajiman and Almiyat were attacked with a sickle on the neck within 15 minutes of entering the pra\u00addhan\u2019s house. Sabra looks away as her eyes well up with tears. And your daughters? She purses her lips tight and shakes her head, refusing to say more. When I persist, the tears roll down her cheeks. \u201cHow can I tell you?\u201d she says, looking at Saju, her 12-year-old. She then takes me aside, to the extreme corner of the compound. \u201cIf I tell anyone, who\u2019ll marry Saju?\u201d<\/p>\n A deep breath and fresh resolve later, she continues, \u201cThey first pulled my elder daughter and stripped her. Two boys dragged her to the ground and took turns raping her. Then they grabbed my second daughter and hit her private parts with batons. She started bleeding and was pushed to a corner. They then proceeded to assault the other girls.\u201d \u201cAapa was engaged and would have gotten married today,\u201d Saju tells me later. That day, when the gates were opened after an hour, Sabra rushed out with Saju and others into the jungles close by. They had to walk a whole day and night to reach Kandhla where the volunteers of the camp there came to their aid. This is where she found Rashid, her elder son, who on that day had gone looking for help, and who is out again today, to the Loni camp in Ghaziabad to look for his two sisters who have been missing since that morning at the pradhan\u2019s house.<\/p>\n It is important to note that the first response at any of these camps to questions of sexual violence is immediate denial. In Gangeru, a small town in Muzaffarnagar district dominated by Shia Muslims, the Arabia-Islam-Hudru-Islam madrassa has provided refuge to over 400 people from the 21 villages nearby. When asked if any of the women here had reported any cases of rape, Mohammed Sanaullah, the head of the seminary, tells me candidly, \u201cWomen have been raped and tortured, but it is my sincere advice to forget them. The families of these women will disown them if they come to know that they have spoken about it.\u201d<\/p>\n When I reach the Gangeru camp, a group of women is sitting around Sabiha, who gave birth to her third daughter three days after reaching this camp. I asked them if they knew of any cases of sexual violence, and they all replied in unison, \u201cWe fled before it happened. But we know of other women who were brutally raped.\u201d This attribution to other women when talking of sexual violence is consistent across camps. \u201cIn Islam, rape is treated like adultery,\u201d Manzar, a local lawyer from the district, had told me earlier. \u201cThe women will not talk for fear of being accused of adultery.\u201d<\/p>\n However, even as I am leaving, twentysomething Shama follows me. \u201cHow did you know women had been raped,\u201d she asks me. \u201cWomen at the other camps told me,\u201d I respond. \u201cIt\u2019s true,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s painful to pee and take a dump. I can\u2019t even tell the camp doctor. The women in the camp have given me herbal medicine.\u201d \u201cThey twisted my three-year-old daughter\u2019s arms, threw her. When I ran to rescue her, they thrashed me with a baton, then used it to rape me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey shouted Musalmanon ki laundiyaon ko rakh lo (keep all the Muslim girls),\u201d recounts Mehraz with a shudder. She too had taken refuge in Billu Pradhan\u2019s house and was, like the others, both witness and victim in this numbing festival of violence and hate. She is among the only few women who answers with an empha\u00adtic \u2018yes\u2019 when asked about sexual assault. Her breasts were attacked with a sharp trowel. \u201cThere were 8-10 boys who seemed to be on a mission. They\u2019d strip a woman, attack her and rape her. Then they\u2019d grab the next one, within minutes. Billu Pradhan had vanished after the first 20 minutes.\u201d Her 12-year-old son had been left behind as Mehraz had fled with her eight-year-old daughter and husband Akbar Qureshi. The house was attacked by a group of 10-15 men and her son burnt alive. His charred body was found later.<\/p>\n Her voice is still charred. \u201cWhen the gates of Billu Pradhan\u2019s house were unlocked, I had no clothes on me. My husband and daughter had hid in a jute sack under a charpoy. We all ran as the Hindu boys chased us. But somehow there was news of the police reaching the village. The boys turned back,\u201d she says, wending her way again through the nightmare, her unslept, baggy eyes turning red. \u201cThe police came only two hours later. When we asked them for protection, the police officer tried to arrest my husband for inciting violence. We carefully stepped back and took the way to the highway through the jungles. We later took a trolley that was carrying several other Muslims from our village.\u201d Mehraz is now in the Loni camp and does not want to return to her village ever. \u201cWomen have been raped, but their families will disown them if they come to know they have talked,\u201d says a madrassa head.<\/p>\n While woman after woman in several camps talks about what happened to each of them that fateful morning, the people in Lakh Bawdi remain defiant, and in denial. \u201cThe police have arres\u00adted my son for no reason,\u201d says Saroj Bala, mother of 28-year-old Bagla Bhagat, who has been arrested on the charges of rape, murder and robbery during the riots. \u201cEveryone knows him. You can ask anyone in the village if he can do this.\u201d Fifty-year-old Vimla remains equally perplexed, and prejudiced. \u201cThey have arres\u00adted my son Dharamveer for no reason,\u201d she says. \u201cWhy don\u2019t they arrest the Muslims who keep bombs in their mosques?\u201d<\/p>\n The mosques in the villages stand burnt, vandalised. Ask about the charred Muslim houses in the village, and the stock response is, \u201cThey set their own houses on fire for the compensation.\u201d \u201cHindus res\u00adpect their culture,\u201d the women add. \u201cThey can never dishonour any woman.\u201d Rul\u00ading Samaj\u00adwadi Party leader Pra\u00admod Rana told villagers, while add\u00adressing them recen\u00adtly, \u201cIf the Muslims come back, cooperate with them, but tell them you can\u2019t protect them.\u201d<\/p>\n Billu Pradhan has been abs\u00adconding since the week after the riots. When we contacted his wife, she refused to talk about the incident or his whe\u00adreabouts. Till date, only six cases of gangrape and five of rape have been registered. And the list of complainants does not even include the testimonies of Shabana, Mehraz or the others in this story. Based on what the nine women we spoke to have told us, close to 19 women were killed, abducted, raped or sodomised that morning at Billu Pradhan\u2019s house.<\/p>\n Last week, after the body of a half-naked woman was found in Lakh Bawdi\u2019s sugarcane fields, UP state women\u2019s commiss\u00adion chairperson Zarina Usmani confirmed sexual violence on women during the communal riots in Muzaf\u00adfarnagar, Shamli, Baghpat, Saharanpur and Meerut districts. In an open letter, she urged \u201cwomen to come forward and register their complaints\u201d. \u201cA majority of the (victi\u00admised) women are from the weaker sections and are being threate\u00adned to stay silent,\u201d she said. UP home secretary Kamal Saxena, when asked if women had been raped and moles\u00adted during the riots, said, \u201cNo woman has registered a complaint with the police. The police can take action only after getting complai\u00adnts.\u201d<\/p>\n Patriarchy and communalism. They colluded, once again, on the morning of September 8. At the house of none other than the village head. Billu Pradhan. Related Story: Kamalpura: Hindu Dalit camp<\/a> They had invested hope in the village pradhan. He had said he\u2019d protect them. Instead, what happened at his house during the morning of the riots will make you shudder. Outlook meets Muslim women at the camps, the faceless Nirbhayas of Muzaffarnagar…. By Neha Dixit Pictures by Narendra Bisht Lakh Bawdi, a village in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,480,103,481],"tags":[],"thb-sponsors":[],"yoast_head":"\n![](\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-pMJQvBlzpcA\/UrZWtBraNFI\/AAAAAAAAAUA\/1KEMns6Qeuc\/s320\/jhola_camp_20131230.jpg.jpg\")
<\/a>To reprise the well-worn back story, things had been tense for a while, since the end of August. Word was a Muslim boy in Kawal village had \u2018eve-teased\u2019 a Jat girl (though some say it was a traffic-related incident). Her brother and cousin apparently avenged the slight by killing him, and were in turn allegedly lynched by an irate Muslim mob on the spot. Tem\u00adpers ran high for days\u2014the air rife with rumour, fake videos and all the modern complements of a riot in the making. Politicians led the chorus as provocative speeches and incitements to viole\u00adnce rent the air at two \u2018war councils\u2019: a Muslim con\u00adg\u00adregation after Fri\u00adday pra\u00adyers in Muzaffarnagar town, and a Jat maha\u00adpanchayat at Kawal on September 7. The following morning, several villages woke up to the news that a Muslim mob had attacked groups of Jats returning from Kawal, killed them and dumped their bodies in the Jauli canal, a Muslim-dom\u00adinated area. The news reached Lakh Bawdi too. \u201cWhen we asked Billu Pradhan to protect us, he assured us that nothing would happen,\u201d says Abid. \u201cWhile some of us collected in his courtyard, others were asked to flee in a different direction.\u201d<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-uqmRhBlWMao\/UrZWt2FhYrI\/AAAAAAAAAUM\/K_2nzBhPdgk\/s320\/sakira_shahpur_20131230.jpg.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cThey came at eight in the morning, a group of 20 men. I was cooking while my husband, a washerman, was about to leave for work. As soon as we heard the commotion, my husband, two sons and I fled. Even as we were running towards Billu Pradhan\u2019s house, we saw our house being set on fire.\u201d It was in this mayhem that Shabana lost track of her two sons. The couple reached Billu Pradhan\u2019s house and were taken ins\u00adide the gated compound. \u201cWithin half an hour, a group of men from the village entered the compound and attacked us. They hacked my husband right before me.\u201d Was she attacked? Shabana is quiet. I try again. This time, her voice a whisper, she says, \u201cThey stripped several of us. Took our honour.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI and two other women hid behind a house,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t remember what happened after that, except that a man from this camp gave me his kurta. He must be here. He is wearing a shirt,\u201d she tells me, seeking him out with her eyes in the water-logged fields the balcony overlooks.<\/p>\n
\nShama\u2019s husband Iqbal and his younger brother Tahrir were both killed in Lakh Bawdi on September 8. Her husband ran a horse carriage for a living; it was found burnt at the house when they went there for a visit later.
\n\u201cI went to Billu Pradhan\u2019s house with my six children,\u201d she recounts. \u201cThey twisted both arms of my three-year-old daughter and threw her. They were young boys whom I had fed so many times in my house. When I ran to rescue her, they thrashed me with a baton, then used it to rape me, as they did to four or five other women.\u201d
\nShama\u2019s sister Shazia, who has been standing 100 metres away so far, joins us. \u201cDon\u2019t tell anyone about it.\u201d Once Shama and her children were thrown out of the pradhan\u2019s house, they and Shazia, with her seven children, fled. \u201cThe men and women from the village watched her naked, bleeding, crying, but no one came forward to help. The women we had assisted during childbirth on several occasions also looked at us blankly,\u201d recalls Shazia.<\/p>\n
\n![](\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-yD8RpKw-ngc\/UrZWsg5XszI\/AAAAAAAAAT0\/LQO_37IDa5A\/s320\/Idgah_camp_kandhla_20131230.jpg.jpg\")
<\/a>
\nAnother camp, another horror story. This time it\u2019s Rubeena, in her early 20s, at the Malakpura camp. \u201cThere were loudspeakers, Bollywood songs blaring out of them, while they were raping us,\u201d she says. \u201cSome boys were also playing the dhol (a local drum), outside the gate.\u201d Rubeena\u2019s cheek has been bitten off, badly. That morning, her mother had asked her to leave for Billu Pradhan\u2019s house along with her younger sister. She told her she would follow with the rest of the fam\u00adily. \u201cTwo men held me by my arms as they bit several parts of my body. Three men raped me then, one after the other,\u201d Rubeena tells me, her expression blank, voice emotionless. Rub\u00adeena\u2019s parents and the rest of the family have been missing for the last three months. She also says two women from her village were made to dance naked in the mosque. Has she registered a complaint about what was done to her? \u201cPlease don\u2019t tell anyone,\u201d she urges. \u201cHow will I live in the camp if I do complain?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n(The names of all the rape victims have been changed.)<\/p>\n
\nOriginal link; http:\/\/www.outlookindia.com\/article.aspx?288907<\/a>
\nPublished by Outlook Magazine on December 21, 2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"