Source: National Herald India
“Sudesh, a 39 year old Dalit woman was sexually harassed by 2 men in 2018. She reported. Instead, the police detained her husband.
Inspector Subhash Chand allegedly extorted INR 5000 from her & still didn’t release her husband, driving her to suicide.
In her suicide note Sudesh said that since the police were siding with the accused she did not have any hope of getting justice & was ending her life.”
On April 14, 2018, Sudesh, a 39 year old Dalit woman committed suicide. Earlier that day, she was on the way to her village Raipur, when two men Pradeep and Subhash (caste not reported) allegedly harassed her and pulled her into a sugarcane field to molest her. Her 8 year old son was with her. She was reportedly beaten up by the molesters when she tried to raise an alarm but they ran away when people started gathering.
According to reports, her husband went to the police station to file a complaint, but Police Sub-Inspector Subhash Chand detained him instead. He also demanded that Sudesh pay a sum of 5,000 rupees to get him released. She scrambled to arrange for the sum and got it from the kiln owner where she worked, reaching the police station at night. The police still did not let her husband and her son go.
The police abused their power to harass and humiliate the victim’s family in order to punish her for getting molested and for daring to take action. The police forced her to undergo further distress and pay for her husband’s release when neither of them had committed any crimes. Criminalising, bullying, and humiliating a victim of violence and her family when they seek legal recourse is an act of victim blame especially used to punish Dalit women for not tolerating sexual violence quietly.
Feeling helpless, she hanged herself, writing in her suicide note that since the police were siding with the accused, she did not have any hope of getting justice, and therefore, she was ending her life. Victim blame pushed her to take her own life by adding the burden of intimidation, humiliation, and harassment instead of protection on top of the burden of facing sexual violence.
References:
https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/up-harassment-dalit-woman-hangs-herself-in-muzaffarnagar-girls-stop-going-to-school-in-saharanpur
https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/crime/140418/dalit-woman-in-up-commits-suicide-over-sexual-harassment-by-2-men.html
https://www.indiatoday.in/crime/story/dalit-woman-commits-suicide-after-facing-sexual-harassment-in-uttar-pradesh-s-muzaffarnagar-1211326-2018-04-13
