The Hindu : Front Page : Ready to fight to the finish: Bilkis

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Monday, Aug 09, 2004

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Ready to fight to the finish: Bilkis

By Manas Dasgupta

AHMEDABAD, AUG. 8. Bilkis Yakub Rasool, the only eye-witness in the Panivel village gang rape and mass murder incident believes that she will have no problem in returning to her native village, Randhikpur in the Panchmahals district of central Gujarat, once the accused are punished. The case has been transferred to the Bombay High Court by the Supreme Court.

Ms. Bilkis Banoo is under constant threat. She and her family members had to change houses 20 times in the last two-and-a-half years because of security reasons. Even the media conference she addressed here this evening was under very heavy police escort because of the "threat perception."

But Bilkis denied that anybody had threatened her against coming to Gujarat after the Supreme Court's order on Friday transferring the case to Maharashtra for trial, or even persuaded her not to appear before the media.

Ms. Bilkis Banoo and the Delhi-based social activists, Farah Naqvi and Huma Khan, refused to comment on the judicial system in the State. However, Ms. Bilkis Banoo said now that the case had been transferred to the Bombay High Court she was confident of getting justice. "It is not my fight alone, but numerous other Muslim women, who also had to suffer the same fate during the communal riots of 2002, will get the courage to speak up after my case is transferred outside the State.''

Logistic problems

The transfer of the case is one milestone, but other logistic problems remain. The transportation of the 54 witnesses, including 26 from her own village, from Gujarat to Mumbai, their boarding and lodging there during the trial and several other issues are pending. Ms. Naqvi and Ms. Khan said they hoped that the CBI, which was investigating the case, would be required to take care of the witnesses, "but there is no specific direction from the Supreme Court on the resources." But Ms. Naqvi is confident: "Now that we have come this far, resources will be no constraint to take it to its logical conclusion."

Ms. Bilkis Banoo feels equally confident. She was never scared even when she took up the case all alone amidst constant threat from the Panchmahals police and the accused and their family members, and now that she had the backing of the National Human Rights Commission, the CBI and so many voluntary organisations, her confidence is redoubled. "I am ready to fight to the finish," she said.

The mother of two daughters, Ms. Bilkis Banoo was immensely thankful to the CBI, which at the instance of the Supreme Court, picked up the thread of investigation and performed its job "very honestly and sincerely" and gave a sense of security to the witnesses to come forward and depose on her behalf.

"Untiring efforts"

The NHRC and the advocate appointed by it, Harish Salve, made "untiring efforts" to take the case to the apex court and argue the case. "It is because of them and the social activists who took up the issue that I can now hope to secure justice and get the accused punished,'' she said.

Ms. Naqvi believed that unlike the Best Bakery case of Vadodara, which too had been transferred to the Bombay High Court, the Bilkis Banoo case would be "faster and the punishment of the accused almost certain,'' because in this case the CBI itself had re-investigated the matter and the accused booked by it.

Ms. Bilkis Banoo did not see any change in the attitude of the Gujarat Government or the State police. What was worse, she said, the State Government did not still recognise "sexual violence," which was "systematically used as a weapon against the Muslim women" during the riots as an "injury" and provide adequate compensation. "A physical injury can heal with treatment, but the scars that have been left in the minds, hearts and bodies of the women raped and violated will never be healed," she said regretfully. Adequate compensation for rape and sexual harassment is one of the points in her petition before the Supreme Court.

The transfer of the case outside Gujarat "means a great deal to me," she said. The order had "in some measure restored my faith in the national legal system. I had lost that faith two years ago when my neighbours turned their back on me and when the State refused to recognise me as an equal citizen of this country. The avenues of justice that should be open to any citizen of this country were closed on me."

While on the run in the wake of the outbreak of communal riots, Ms. Bilkis Banoo, 21, then five months pregnant, and her family members were chased by a violent mob on March 3, 2002, and were caught in a field outside Panivel village. She and the other women members were gangraped and all the 14 others were killed.

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