Why did Imrana’s father-in-law think that he could get away with raping his son’s wife? As Imrana’s story unfolded, I couldn’t get this question out of my mind.

Imrana was raped by her father-in-law one night in June while her husband was away. She told her mother-in-law, who promised her that the man would be punished, but who also asked Imrana to keep silent.

Imrana then told her brother’s wife what had happened; it was her sister-in-law’s intervention that forced the panchayat to take notice of the rape, and it was only then, three days afterwards, that Imrana received any kind of medical attention. When her husband returned, the matter had gone from the panchayat to the Darul Islam, a religious court that accepted the fact of the rape but decreed that Imrana and her husband would now have to live apart, since she had become ‘haraam’ to him.

This week, as the police finally took action against Imrana’s father-in-law, the judgment of the Darul Islam has been bitterly condemned, questioned and debated. But it seems to me that Imrana’s story is as much about the silence we demand from women as it is about the question of what laws should be brought to bear. It is a monstrous silence, but it is so pervasive and so ruthlessly enforced, that Imrana’s father-in-law was justified in thinking that he would never have to face the consequences of his action.

First, there’s the silence the family often demands, not just in cases of rape, but in other forms of violence. Imrana’s mother-in-law assumed that it would be better, somehow, for the family if the rape could be denied or covered up. That assumption is made by most Indian families; we have such a deep reluctance to face the “shame” that this will bring down on the family as a whole that we are willing to overlook the injustice done to the person who’s been abused. Silence was the first thing that her family asked of Imrana.

A different silence surrounds rape when it’s committed by family members. Women’s rights activists who went to Imrana’s district were told that her case was not unusual; young women were all too frequently assaulted by family members when their husbands were out of the area on work. It wasn’t just her family, but the larger community in UP, that demanded silence from her.

The Darul Islam expects another kind of silence: the silence of the victim who is seen as the embodiment of family honour but not as a person in her own right. It is not Imrana’s religion that demands she should now live apart from her husband, but the narrow-minded interpreters of that religion. Nothing in Islam says that a woman who has been raped should be punished further. Imrana may feel that the verdict is cruel and unjust; but the keepers of the flame have persuaded her that she, as a believer, has no rights. What they are asking of her is monstrous: it is a particularly terrible silence that would prey on someone’s belief.

No matter what the courts decide and how the case goes, justice won’t be done until Imrana finally has the one thing that her family, her society and the media have denied her: a voice of her own.