Girl: Preeta’s courage

Her voice rises above the drone in the open-air class. “A, B, C, D, E….” she chants ignoring her mates’ giggles on the sun-drenched courtyard of the village school. The farmers working at the bundles of hay turn back to smile.

“Preeta (name changed) is a bright student,” teacher Sashibala Devi says rather needlessly. “Even after what happened, she shows no signs of trauma.”

Nor had she that day two months ago when, after a rape attempt on her by a neighbour in their village, Dhawa, she helped strike a blow for all Indian women. It was the eight-year-old's intelligence and bravery in a courtroom full of strangers that allowed the district judge in Rohtas, Bihar, to make legal history by trying, convicting and sentencing the attacker in a single day. The police had been prompt in making the arrest, charging the accused, and motivating the witnesses. But district police chief N.H. Khan has no doubt who was the hero. “The girl was very bold. She gave the details in the court without fear.”

“Main darti nahin (I’m not afraid). A, B, C, D… one, two, three, ek, do, tin… mujhe sab yaad hai (I remember everything),” Preeta declares.
Did the family think of hushing it up for fear of public shame? Grandfather Ramdeo Choudhary’s face takes on a defiant expression. He had gone straight to Nokha police after rescuing Preeta with his son Sudarshan. “We are poor people, but I'm happy for my granddaughter. We have got justice.”

There is no stigma. Most neighbours in the village, 35 km from Sasaram and 182 km from Patna, avoid the subject but one steps forward to say, “Of course, it was Deokumar’s (the accused man’s) fault.”

Nokha police head N.K. Choubey sees signs of mindsets changing after the five-hour conviction on October 19, which capped a year of super-fast rape trials, from a 23-day effort in Alwar to a six-day feat in Bhubaneswar. “The toughies no longer stop us from producing witnesses in court.”

Superintendent Khan says, “Police are inspired. They are probing cases fast. At least 10 more convictions in arms, dacoity and rape cases have taken place since then in Rohtas.”

Villagers say Preeta’s experience has turned her braver. “The other day, a buffalo charged at me. I didn’t run; I neatly side-stepped it,” the girl announces.

Woman: Justice at door

In the fourth year of her marriage, after her police complaint of dowry torture failed to reach the courtroom even after 10 months, Tripti Nigam had begun to lose courage.
Her techie husband had taken a transfer and started living separately less than a month after the wedding. In the third year, he left the country. “Then the dowry demands and mental torture by my in-laws worsened, and finally they threw me out of their house in Lucknow,” the 30-year-old from Kanpur says.

“One day, this woman from the NGO contacted me to talk about a new law against domestic violence. I remembered reading about it in the newspapers a couple of days earlier.”

It took her new petition, filed on October 30, three days flat to be admitted by a Kanpur court. The magistrate ordered an interim maintenance right away but a hitch arose because the court had forgotten to appoint a “protection officer” — one of the new law’s key provisions.

The report of the officer, who may be anyone from a social activist to an academic whom the court can trust, is crucial to the cases.

The husband moved high court and got the maintenance stayed. But the judge made it clear that once a protection officer was appointed and gave his report, the stay would cease to apply. “I’m sure I’ll get justice. The new act is a powerful weapon for helpless women like me,” Tripti said.

Shrinkhala Tiwari of Allahabad has already felt its power, having secured a Rs 1,500 monthly allowance from brother Ajay Kumar who had thrown her out of the house. In November, within days of the new law coming into force on October 26, the high court not only awarded the interim maintenance but ordered Ajay to take his unmarried sister back into the house.

Mother: fight for child

For nearly four years, the law had forced Mithu Sarkar to choose between her 10-year-old son and the man in her life. Biswajit, whom she had met two years after her messy divorce, had lifted her from “the depths of depression”.

“But I couldn’t marry him for years, because if I did, I wouldn't have got custody of my son,” Mithu says. “I had to wait till I won the case last year. I’m fortunate that Biswajit was so understanding and agreed to wait indefinitely”

Others like her can celebrate. On November 21, the apex court judged that a woman can be granted custody of her minor child even after remarriage. “Had this happened earlier, I wouldn’t have suffered so much,” Mithu says. Yet she was luckier than she realises. Lekha, a mother from the south, would testify to that.

She had got married after winning her custody case in a lower court, only to watch with horror as Kerala High Court handed the child back to her former husband. The reason: her second marriage.

Her fight in the Supreme Court is the reason many Indian mothers would be spared Mithu Sarkar’s choice.

Daughter: Welcome home

In Kariha, 5 km from Punjab’s Nawanshahr, Surinder remembers the stories her mother told her. “She told me how guilty she felt when I was born. How she was insulted, scolded not just by her in-laws but her parents for delivering a girl, who would leave the family poorer through her dowry.”

Her mother had spoken of neighbours who would drop their baby girls in the village well at night. Of deaths caused by forced abortions. Of the beatings.

The stories Surinder tells her own daughter will be different. She’ll talk about how a girl’s birth can be celebrated. How she can go to school with her brother.

“My mother-in-law pestered me to deliver a son. I was under pressure to get an abortion after the tests showed a girl foetus,” the woman in Punjab’s kurimaar (girl-child killer) zone says.

But Surinder has heard the Centre has recommended two “insurance” schemes for the 11th five-year plan. Under the first, a girl’s family — preferably the mother — will receive Rs 1 lakh once it’s confirmed that the girl’s birth was registered and she was immunised and enrolled in school.

The second is a Rs 1-lakh “scholarship” the family receives if and when she completes class XII. The Life Insurance Corporation will bankroll the schemes.

This, Surinder believes, will fast-track the change that is already in the air. “My daughter Pinky’s birth a few months ago was a joyous affair.”

She thanks deputy commissioner Krishan Kumar’s drive against female foeticide. Midwives and doctors are under watch; clinics have been sealed, and expectant mothers have been told to report to district headquarters.

“My husband had planned to take me to Jalandhar to abort my baby girl,” says Rajjo in Khothran. “But he was taken aback by the DC’s summons. Nanki was born a few months later. I call her ‘DC’ at times and she responds.”

A neighbour, one of the army of volunteers fighting the curse, had spilled the beans to Kumar’s office.

“My in-laws now realise I am important. For the first time in my life, either at my parents’ home or here, I’m tasting the legs and breasts of a chicken and not just the backbone meat,” Rajjo smiles.

(Inputs from Nalin Verma, Tapas Chakraborty, Mita Mukherjee, Gajinder Singh and Charu Sudan Kasturi)