The unfortunate rape and murder of eight-year-old Asifa in Kathua district of Jammu has taken a nasty turn and is dividing the state along communal lines. A long struggle brought radical changes in India’s anti-rape laws following the horrific rape and murder of Nirbhaya in Delhi in December 2013. That outrage, however, is missing in case of Asifa and the issue is being presented as a communal fight between Muslims and Hindus. Events such as the lawyers of Kathua court preventing the Crime Branch from filing a charge sheet against the accused and the Jammu High Court Bar Association (JHCBA) calling for a general strike on April 11 are appalling in nature. These lawyers apparently took great pride in preventing officials of the Crime Branch from performing their duties. The insensitivity shown in this case could not get any worse.
Lawyers are supposed to be an enlightened group of people, who, through their practice, serve as the custodians of the constitution. The behaviour of scores of these men in black coats on April 9 on the premises of the Kathua court is distasteful for any conscious citizen. An eight-year-old was kidnapped, drugged and raped in a temple. The motive behind such a gruesome act, according to the accused, was to terrorize the Gujjar and Bakerwal community so that they left the area. Even policemen were involved: some of them destroyed evidence and are now behind bars. Yet, communal lines were drawn by political parties and their associates from the moment the case was handed over to the Crime Branch of Jammu and Kashmir Police. This is how the Hindu Ekta Manch (HEM) was born. They had no qualms in announcing publicly that this was a Hindu versus Muslim issue and took out public rallies to demand release of the rapist and murderer. This has not been seen anywhere in this part of this world in recent history - where a rapist is supported by the public, including women willing to go on hunger strike for their demands.
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The JHCBA has only worsened the problem by spearheading the movement for the deportation of Rohingyas and Bangladeshis from Jammu. But their main demand has been the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) taking over the case. This is where the fault lines become clearer.
Why is the JHCBA stressing on a CBI investigation when the Crime Branch has already completed it and filed a charge sheet? Is it really to ensure a fair probe?
The ruling Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) supports this demand. Senior ministers Lal Singh and Chandra Prakash Ganga have also joined a Hindu Ekta Manch rally. Support for a CBI probe has come from some high offices of the country. Minister of State at the Prime Minister’s Office Jitendra Singh said on February 22, “If people feel that they don’t have faith in the police or the Crime Branch investigation and the case should be handed over to the CBI, I don’t think there is a problem. If the state government does so and recommends it to the Centre, we will definitely act on it.” Singh is an MP from Udhampur-Kathua.
However, Singh and others forget that their party is in power in the state and the Crime Branch is the investigation wing of Jammu and Kashmir Police under this government. The Crime Branch has a professional team of officers dealing with this case. When the same Jammu and Kashmir Police conducts counter-insurgency operations in which they kill militants, their competency is not questioned.
One is also compelled to point out that CBI also probed the Pathribal fake encounter and proved that five civilians who were killed by Indian Army after the massacre of 35 Sikhs in March 2000 were innocents. But the government of India refused to prosecute the officers of its army. In this case, if a minister in union government is supporting a CBI probe, how can it be ensured that it will be impartial, since the body answers to them?
The debate on public faith in the state police, or lack thereof, serves to obfuscate the matter. At the heart of it, political parties are competing for the attention of the voters, who are provoking them to go as far as defending someone accused of such a heinous crime. Though Congress has not officially made its stance on this issue clear, Ravinder Sharma, a party spokesman, attended a meeting called by the JHBA on April 8 in which many issues, including the demand for a CBI probe, were discussed and a general strike was announced for April 11.
The rape and murder of a child has been unfortunately religionized. It is almost like a replay of 2008 when Kashmir and Jammu were divided along communal lines over the Amarnath land row. One could understand tensions at that time were related to land allotment and the obvious beneficiary in the elections that were coming up was the BJP.
In this case, defending a rapist and murderer has made politics murky. The divide became official in 2014 when parts of the Jammu division voted en mass for the BJP, helping it sweep the majority seats in the region. It is also pertinent to mention that the Congress, during its rule with both People’s Democratic Party and National Conference, also played a role in dividing the state along communal lines. They perhaps sowed the seeds and the BJP benefitted, pushing the Congress into the oblivion.
Events that have shaped the discourse around Asifa’s rape and murder serve as a grim reminder about the dangers of using religion for politics, and what happens when these lines are blurred.
