CNN Desaiganj, India – When they sexually assaulted her, she was 14, perhaps 16. I was 9 years old, and it was 1972. Her experience reflected the India of her younger days – except she resided in extreme destitution.
I couldn’t imagine plunging my hand into piles of animal waste. In my neighborhood in Kolkata, I used to watch women do the same thing to clean the walls of my grandfather’s house. They collected cow dung, shaped it into patties, and then sold them as fuel. With her bare hands, she slapped the dung onto the walls and shaped it into patties. She was a tribal adivasi girl, orphaned and performing the most menial jobs, putting bread in her belly.
However, sexual assault does not discriminate based on social class or cultural background.
She took the case to court. Did she then confront a few women? She was brave enough to speak out. Such was the stigma of rape in India. She might as well have worn a scarlet letter on her chest. It happened afterwards.
The justices of the highest court in the land did not believe she was telling the truth, so they overturned the convictions of the two police constables who were maintaining their innocence against her attackers.
It was a ruthless display of authority, truly depicting the start of gender-based violence that occurred recently. This gave rise to a women’s movement in India, with various groups dedicated to empowering women. It sparked the first-ever public protest about rape in India, leading to a reform of sexual assault laws. From both a legal and social standpoint, her case was monumental.
She is uniformly depicted as a rape victim, a woman who cried not. Though the courts ultimately refused to believe Mathura was raped, her history has come down on her. After reading about the case, I developed a curiosity about women’s rights around the world and started working as a journalist in the United States.
A young woman from New Delhi was brutally gang-raped while traveling on a bus, resulting in a subsequent demonstration by thousands of people on the streets. India experienced another significant rape incident in December. Throughout the last forty years, I have been able to observe the development of my home country and reflect upon it by using her case as a lens.
The headline in Hindustan Times caught my eye, accompanying a column that lamented the fact that the attitudes of men had changed little since the landmark case in 1972. Some said that the outcry in Delhi could be traced back to the rape mentioned in the legislation, with timelines and numerous other opinion stories.
Mathura everywhere popped now name court-given whose girl teenage the victim the to happened had what know to seemed one no But.
Was she still breathing?
So, my quest began to find the woman who innocently walked to a village police station to settle a domestic dispute and returned home as a rape victim.
I desired to locate her for numerous purposes. In deep manners, I connected with her.
Mathura’s situation and how society addressed it, as well as how India dealt with rape, deeply affected me. I felt both anger and embarrassment due to the generalizations made about sexual assault news coverage in my country. I wanted to educate myself on the matter.
Did she hear about the Delhi gang rape that pulled her name back into the news? Did she manage to find happiness, have children, and find love? I wondered how she coped with the hardscrabble life given to her by poverty, illiteracy, and patriarchy, and I knew how devastating rape could be.
Residing in a distant village was a destitute, unschooled young lady. I was informed that this occurred four decades ago. Countless telephone conversations were initiated to various individuals, primarily legal professionals, reporters, and advocates. Obtaining the answers to these inquiries would prove to be challenging.