\u201cIf the government does not do anything in the next few days, I will do what even Damini did not do. I will set myself and my sons on fire in the middle of Muzaffarnagar city,\u201d says S on the phone, two days after two rape accused in her case were granted bail. When I had met her in July, S was about to start her \u2018Stitching Training Centre\u2019 along with her husband, determined to fight her case till justice was hers.<\/p>\n
The Damini she refers to you may know as Nirbhaya, or more baldly as the \u201cDelhi gangrape victim\u201d. S was gang\u00adraped by three men from her village in Lankh on September 8, 2013, in Shamli district (seeOutlook<\/em>\u00a0story Shadow Lines<\/a>, Aug 4, 2014), but her ordeal, as well as that of hundreds of women sexually abused and gangraped, was subsumed within a broad category that came to be called \u2018the Muzaffarnagar riots\u2019. It was a madness that\u2014according to the \u2018official\u2019 record of the Uttar Pradesh government\u2014led to 60 deaths, seven rapes and the displacement of 40,000 people. Never mind if we could actually be looking at some 200 deaths, 1,20,000 people displaced and hundreds of unreported mass rapes.<\/p>\n S\u2019s trajectory has crossed the Nirbhaya case in several ways. The Criminal Amendment Act, 2013, drafted by the Verma Commission set up in the wake of the protests following the December 16, 2012, Delhi gangrape, came into force in February 2013. While the Act introduced multiple amendments in laws related to sexual violence, lawmakers for the first time also took cognisance of the systematic violence against women during communal riots in India. As a result, a crucial amendment\u2014Section 376(2)(g)\u2014\u00adwas included in the Indian Penal Code.<\/p>\n