Source: Indian Kanoon
On January 10, 1996, a woman belonging to the Pardhi tribe, was raped by three upper-caste men, Ramdas, Ashok, and Madhukar (caste unreported).
The Pardhis were one of 150 tribes who were termed as hereditary criminals under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. Under this act, members of these notified tribes were systematically registered and their movements restricted, with many being quarantined without conviction. Although they were denotified, stigma and policing of the communities continued under the Habitual Offenders Act of 1952. In Maharashtra, the Pardhis are classified as a Scheduled Tribe.
The victim, who resided in the Ekurka village had come to Kewad to visit her family, and was staying at her father’s home. Her family members were away, working at the Jagadamba Sugar Factory in Ahmednagar district, and she had come to help them in harvesting their crops.
At around 10 pm on January 10, Ramdas came to the victim’s house while she was alone, asking her to come with him. When she refused, he dragged her out, and he whistled to call the other two men, Ashok and Madhukar. Around 500 metres away from her home, the three men raped her and threatened to kill her if she reported the incident. Although her uncle lived nearby, he did not come to help her when she raised an alarm, because they had threatened him with dire consequences as well. Ramdas and Ashok were the landowners of the plots adjacent to the victim’s family, and there had previously been land disputes between them.
The next day, she visited her sister at Kelgaon village, who advised her to lodge a report. Although she went to a police station in Kaij and reported the matter, it was neither recorded nor was any action taken. After speaking to her parents in Ahmednagar, she again reported the incident to the Beed police station. The report that was finally lodged was marked as being lodged on January 18, or eight days after the violence took place.
In spite of the initial issues, the perpetrators were convicted under Section 376 read with Section 34 of the IPC, and Section 3(2)(v) of the Atrocities Act by a Sessions Judge in Beed in 1998, and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Maharashtra High Court also dismissed the appeals of the accused.
However, in 2006, the Supreme Court accepted the appeal of the accused and upturned both of their convictions. The judgement flatly dismissed the conviction under the Atrocities Act, saying that “the mere fact that the victim happened to be a girl belonging to a scheduled caste does not attract the provisions of the Act”. Hence erasing the fact that the rape was also caste motivated, where a community is put in place by a man from an upper-caste. The court dismissed and erased the survivor’s experience as a Pardhi woman, instead framing it as a mere detail that she was using to her advantage. Further, the judgement questioned and blamed her for the discrepancies in dates and the delay in the filing of the report, even though she testified to inaction by the police as well as being unable to verify the details of the report on which she was made to give her thumbprint.
References:
https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1787689/
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/6/10/indias-courts-condone-dalit-atrocities/
https://www.akademimag.com/caste-gender-justice
https://lawyerscollective.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/2-feb-compressed.pdf
https://thewire.in/society/decades-after-denotification-pardhis-in-maharashtra-struggle-to-stave-off-criminal-tag
