A Tribute to Priyanka Reddy
Priyanka Reddy represented
the embodiment of an ‘All Indian woman’. Her picture staring at us looks so
alive, gentle, beautiful and compassionate. Her profession was meant to care
for the mute animals and restoring their life. She represented the finest
values that any Indian woman stood for, independent and rooted in
civilizational values. Her face resplendent, radiant in the bright colored
dress, the bindi and entire attire all point to a person who looks trustworthy and
ready to help. Her eyes and smile looked disarming. She would be the first one you
may think of going to when in trouble in a crowded place. She could be anyone’s
loving sister, a daughter who takes care of old parents. She had a bright
future as a professional and a homemaker, one who could have been a beautiful
mother and raise children. Her parents would never have that joy now.
Why was such a
beautiful person raped and why did her murderers extinguish her life so brutally?
The answer lies in
the very essence of what she stood for and symbolized and what her rapists and murderers
saw in her as opposite to their idea of who a woman should be.
Several people
have called me up in the last few days. Two of them were men who have grown up
daughters and who travel for work every day. A journalist called up wanting to
know what kind of men would commit a heinous crime like that. But the most disturbing
was my friend’s teenage daughter. She wanted to know why men such as Mohammed Pasha
rape and what kind of men led by him burn the body afterwards.
“Have you worked
on such cases,” she asked, “and if you can tell me why they do so?”
This article is my
tribute to Priyanka Reddy and all sexual assault victims I have worked with and
testified on their behalf in the courts.
There are two
issues here. One is the sexual assault and the other the burning of her body by
her perpetrators. The two are separate, have different meanings but have to be understood
as part of a single world view of her perpetrators. Both are associated with
violent fantasies about women fed into them that may be unique, part of
worldview that is not easily shared.
Priyanka Reddy
called up her home feeling terrified. Girls, working women all over India do so
routinely while passing through certain areas or key spots. These are the areas
where even the police are apprehensive of attending a call in distress.
The perpetrators
of Priyanka Reddy zeroed down on her in an organized, calculated and planned way.
They punctured her tyres, surrounded her and then offered to help before raping
her. It is a sexual game similar to ‘Taharrush’, played under conditions in an
area where a group of perpetrators feel safe and in control over the victim and
know no one will come to stop them because they are so many in number. Why her
perpetrators felt in control in that area is no rocket science. A rape such as
this is worked out to the last detail number of times in an environment that
permits and encourages such a behavior.
In my interactions with convicts many shared
that but why play Taharrush? Why not make it simpler say like abducting and committing
the assault and then run away? Why delay and give a chance to the police? The
answer to these questions is not difficult to understand. Making
it a game doesn’t make it seem a crime, but an act of bravado like a hunter,
even mandated and sanctioned in the environment such men grow up. The game creates
no guilt, no shame. Ask prisoners across the world. They will tell you all this
smilingly. Or better, ask a former Chief Minister of our country. He will tell
you why boys will be boys.
Mr. Ali, the home minister
in the State, in his infinite wisdom proclaimed if Priyanka Reddy had called
the police she would have survived. He would do well to check if his own policemen
feel secure enough to venture into an area like that and attend the call
especially during the night?
How could four men
approach, surround and rape a woman and then burn her body without any fear of
being discovered? Such men establish power and control and never have any doubt
about it. It is a similar strategy that men used to commit rape in a highly
crowded square on New Year’s eve in Germany few years ago. They had no fear of
being discovered or caught.
Gangs who commit such
crimes do so by and large with a deep seated hatred for women and often think
so as a collective before they attempt such a crime. They don’t see a woman as a
human being, much less as someone who lives her own life on her own terms,
driving with confidence not covering her face, through their area. In their
collective conversation and discussion such women are referred to as ‘the other’,
violating whose body is perhaps no crime. She is ‘the other’ for men like
Mohammed Pasha whom raping and even killing has little consequences. She is an
alien with an identity that is foreign, who has been dehumanized a million
times before. Her body therefore, is burnt not to erase evidence but to express
the inner hatred they carry built up over their lifetime.
Such men who
sexually assault and kill show a brutality of being part of a larger eco-system
of hatred. The disposal of the body is only a signature act, the burning
symbolic of the hatred. Burning of the body leads to a strong putrid smell with
chances of discovery. Why did they not have the fear they will be found and
discovered. The answer lies in the fearlessness of such men who play games
similar to Taharrush. They feel invincible and in control.
Do such groups have
an identity? Yes and it is around hatred that doesn’t develop in a day. It is
nurtured and grows over a period making them a gang with a purpose to kill brutally.
They are rarely first time criminals who use a blitz attack to stun, rape and kill.
Their beliefs are shared, from gender and faith on one hand to a deeper
pathology not usually shared. The leader in such a gang leads by example, from how
you encircle a woman to what you do with her body, dead or alive.
Survivors of
sexual assault do not tell their stories in the words we know of. They tell
their stories in silence, a silence that remains and pervades the conscience.
Those like Priyanka Reddy who are no more, their stories reverberate in silence
and churn our conscience about their final moments.
Sexual assault is
described by victims through feelings – terrified, dirty, violated, confused,
ashamed. They describe it less so through acts or events as our Minister
believes women in our country do. This is what Priyanka Reddy possibly went
through in her final moments when she faced those men on that terrible night.
But Priyanka
Reddy’s perpetrators surely went through an opposite set of feelings. For them
it was an act whose seeds developed long ago in the environment they lived in and
one they perfected to teach a lesson to a woman who passed through their area defying
their worldview.
Will we as a
society ever understand what Priyanka Reddy and millions of women go through when
they pass by certain areas and what some perpetrators think when they pass them
by? When we will understand that, perhaps we can also understand why women like
Priyanka Reddy become victims of rape and get killed by men like Mohammed Pasha
and his team. Till then we as a society cannot look at ourselves in the eye and
wonder why there is so little justice for women.
Rajat Mitra
Psychologist,
Speaker and Author of ‘The Infidel Next Door’
(Rajat Mitra received the United Nations award for Gender Justice in 2011 and has appeared as
an expert witness in courts for many cases of sexual assault. He has also
assessed, interviewed perpetrators of heinous crimes over many years.)
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