It breaks my heart to see the mother of the 18 year old Dalit girl in Pipli in Orissa, crying for her daughter, praying that she will get better. I went to see her twice on Saturday and Sunday. Both times, all I saw was her sitting perched on the charpai and crying incessantly. She is poor, illiterate and does not understand what is happening in the case, whether it is the arrest of the main accused Pasei Prashant Pradhan on Sunday or that the Congress is putting pressure on the BJD Government, asking Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and the accused Agriculture Minister Pradeep Maharathi to resign. All she knows is that her daughter Bobbina is lying in hospital in coma, with her neck swollen after the accused raped her and he with his three accomplices strangulated her on the 28th of November 2011. It was only in December that Bobbina”s brother managed to file an FIR after great difficulty.
When I break the good news to her mother that the main accused has been arrested, she looks at me with a sense of hope amidst her crying continuously…Hope that justice will be done. But when I ask her what she feels about the main accused being caught finally after all these months, she just tells me in Oriya, that she wants her daughter to get better. That is what is her main concern, for she knows that her daughter is more precious to her than the politics behind the case. The victim’s grand father too says that he is more worried about Bobbina. That is the love they have, feeling the pain and suffering rhat she is going through even as her mother tells me that her daughter is a lovely girl. While there are chances Bobbina might be shifted to AIIMS Delhi, her family hopes it will result in a miracle. For them AIIMS is another jargon in the oblivious world of literacy and knowledge.
The first thing I saw when I set foot into Arjunguda, the village in Pipli block to meet her parents and tell them that the main accused has been arrested, I see workers of a political party that is barely prominent in Orissa, but they are there to play their game of cards. I see they are sitting there talking amongst themselves. One of them comes up to me while I am speaking to Bobbina’s mother and then is enlightened about her identity, trying to pacify her too, But it is no more than just a show. For next, I am asked to go take his President’s soundbyte. To use this as a gimmick for a few seconds of air time and garner votes from the illiterate and unaware poor is sad and distasteful. But such is the game of politics. Speaking of which, the main Opposition in the State, the Congress might have an upper hand here with a loss of face for the BJD thanks to the Agriculture Minister.
I wonder, do films depict reality or does reality imitate reel life? To think that the Agriculture Minister was sheltering the accused in his farmhouse before they went absconding is more like a Bollywood film come to life. To think that Bobbina’s fate was doomed because she was witness to her friend being molested by the same culprits. Because these girls were Dalits they could not speak up while the accused with their political clout looked to get away scot free. While Bobbina’s friend went on to commit suicide after being molested, she fights a battle far worse in the SCB medical College and Hospital in Cuttack. Had it not been for an activist filing a PIL in the High Court demanding better treatment and media highlighting the case, Bobbina would probably not have got the little that she deserves too.
The plight of the low socio economic masses and the clout of the political classes shows where India as a third world country is heading to. While people raise questions over media hyping situations, what should they then do as the watchdog of democracy to show that not every atrocity after all is going unnoticed.
