From Vachathi incident in 1992 when 269 police and Forest department personnel gang raped Tribal women of the village, a Dalit woman Padmini was gang raped by 11 policemen in Annamalai Nagar Police Station after beating to death her husband Nandagopal in custody in 1992 to four Tribal women of Irula community gang raped by policemen in Villupuram district last year ( July 2011), gang rapes by policemen had taken place whenever Jayalalitha had led the regime in Tamil Nadu. Much worse is that when this lady presides over the regime, the government goes to any extent to defend and save the rapist policemen from punishment and the party led by her tries to tarnish the image of affected women by decrying their character.
Now within one week, even when the conscience of the whole nation was rudely shaken over the incident of a 23-year old medical student was gang raped in a bus in Delhi on December 18 and there were agitations against it in various parts of the country, there were three gruesome incidents of rape and murder and murder of a 13 year old school girl Punitha near Srivaikundam in Tuticorin district on December 20, an eleven year old Dalit girl of Puthur Panchayat in Thalainayar block in Nagapattinam district raped by two men in her house and a 23-year old Dalit woman Suganya raped by a five-member gang close to a temple at the Manimutharu riverbed in Vridhachalam on December 24.
But, even as the Prime Minister, UPA Chairperson Tmt Sonia Gandhi, Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde and Delhi Chief Minister Tmt. Sheila Dixit have not only unequivocally condemned the incident and promised stringent punishment to the culprits but also met the agitating students and assured them of severe action. Almost everybody who matters had issued statements condemning the gory incident and the Delhi High Court suo motu took up the issue and directed the Delhi police to file a detailed report. All political parties have condemned the incident and the BJP had even demanded a special session of Parliament to be convened. Students, women groups and activists in urban areas all over the country enthusiastically took out marches and held demonstrations condemning Delhi incident. Television news channels had been telecasting round the clock and newspapers carried pages of reports on the actions developments following the Delhi incident. To speak about the incident ad nauseam has almost become a fad among middle class elites and you are decried if you don’t !
But in Tamil Nadu, except DMK President Kalaignar and parties such as CPM and VCK , other political parties, social organizations and the prominent personalities from various fields who had condemned Delhi incident and the activists who took out marches and held demonstrations on that issue are conspicuous by their silence of these atrocities committed in the state. Of course as she is used to, Chief Minister of the State is unmoved by these atrocious crimes against women and her government machinery is “ geared up” to cover up these crimes as it used to do in her previous regimes.
The Dalit girl of Puthur village’, who suffers from epilepsy and is too fragile, wanted an assurance if “all was right” with her. Fearing a backlash she had hidden her skirt under a basket. Her parents, agricultural wage labourers, returned home in the evening of Dec21 and saw their daughter looking ill. Only in the morning of next day, unable to bear the physical pain, she summoned courage to tell her parents. She was admitted to Tiruturaipoondi government hospital. The girl was given an antibiotic injection and a painkiller, after she complained of severe pain, a doctor had said. However, no swab samples or the girl’s clothes were collected. The swab samples and material evidence have to be collected by the police. According to Thalinayar inspector, a magistrate would have to give the order for sample collection. But in the meanwhile, the President of Puthur Panchayat and the Village Administrative Officer had contacted the girl’s father over phone in the hospital and asked him to refrain from filing a police complaint. They wanted to “sort out the matter” and promised that they would bear the expenses for the girl. The girl’s father told them, “ I asked them if they would do the same thing, if she had been their daughter. I asked them to come to the hospital, look at my daughter’s face, and repeat what they said.” The police are yet to take up the case possibly hoping to settle bu other means.
In the Vriddhachalam incident, the victim Suganya, a daily wage earner, hailing from Gunamangalam village in Cuddalore district had come to Vriddhachalam to meet her relative Packiaraj. The two had gone to the riverbed to spend some time when the gang pounced on them. They hi Packiaraj when he tried to protect the woman and tied him to a tree before raping her. She had fainted and rescued by some passerby. Police took her first to Vridhachalam government hospital and later shifted her to the Mundiampakkan government medical college hospital in Villupuram, where she was medically examined. Neither the doctors at the hospital nor the police officials were willing to speak abou the incident. District SP A.Radhika is reported to have enquired her for two hours and ordered for medical examination. But the relatives of the woman alleged that the police threatened the woman all through the night and tried to divert the issue. They were also threatened by police and Packiaraj is reported to have been taken to the station and threatened.
The excruciating wait for justice for nearly two decades long for the people of Vachathi, a tribal hamlet in Pappireddipatti taluk in Dharmapuri district, at last saw the light of the day on September 29, 2011 with Dharmapuri district and sessions court convicting all the 215 surviving persons involved in the blood-curdling Vachathi mass rape of 18 women and savage attack case in 1992 during the regime of Jayalalitha.
In June 1992, this tribal hamlet in northern Tamil Nadu was witness to what brutal law enforcers and callous government officials could do to the poor and the powerless. Women were raped, men were assaulted, houses were looted and destroyed, and cattle were killed, all in the name of upholding law, of preventing the illegal felling and smuggling of sandalwood. The planned, systematic attack on Vachathi was carried out quite brazenly. The 269 persons arraigned as accused by the Central Bureau of Investigation must have thought that they could get away with crimes against the hapless villagers, who were offenders in the eyes of the law. Nothing else can explain the seeming impunity with which they went about the assault on the village. While men in the lower ranks indulged in violence, senior officers watched from a distance. The subsequent attempts at denial and cover-up were indicative of sanction for the attack from elements at the highest levels of the ADMK government.
The then Forest Minister and now Agriculture Minister, K.A.Sengottaiyan, with the permission and blessing of their ‘Amma’, (that is how ADMK ministers speak always) had accused the entire village of being involved in sandalwood smuggling, and when a team of officials went there for investigation, the villagers had attacked them. In the same way the Assembly also was told. The ADMK regime placed a lot of hurdles for the victims in seeking justice. The incident occurred on June 20, 1992. On June 22, when tribal people complained to Harur police of gang rape, damage to houses and property by members of the team, police refused to entertain the complaint. Only after three months on Sep.22, following court directions, Harur police registered a case. As there was no progress in the name-sake investigation a petition was filed before Madras High Court by late A.Nallasivan seeking transfer of the case to CBI for investigation. When a single judge A.Hadi ordered for CBI investigation Jaya regime went on appeal against it to a Bench.
The High Court Bench of Justices D.Raju and K.Swami in May 1995 ordered:
“In the light of such a stand taken by the State Government, it becomes very difficult even for the CB-CID to independently investigate the matter, therefore, we are of the view that the stand taken by the learned single Judge that, in the facts and circumstances of the case, the investigation should be entrusted to CBI is well founded and is also supported by a decision of the Supreme Court in R. S. Sodhi v. State of U.P.”
In the Padmini rape case, the Supreme Court passed the order on the 29th of March 2011 in CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 1511 OF 2003, filed by the convicted policeman of Tamil Nadu for the custodial death of one Nandagopal and the gang rape of his wife Padmini.
The Tamil Nadu policemen wrongfully confined Nandagopal in police custody in Annamalai Nagar on suspicion of theft from 30.5.1992 till 2.6.1992 and beat him to death there with lathis, and also gang raped his wife Padmini in a barbaric manner. The accused also confined several other persons (who were witnesses) and beat them in the police station with lathis.
The Supreme Court referred to the evidence given by Padmini and held that her evidence discloses the inhuman and savage manner in which the accused, who were police personnel, treated Nandagopal and Padmini.
Parts of the testimony reproduced by the Supreme Court makes one sick. Most of it is not printable.
Despite such compelling facts the charges levelled against the accused policeman did not include the charges of murder. Obviously the Police cannot be expected to slap murder charges against their own kin.
The trial court had the powers and should have compelled the Police to file charges for murder under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code. The trial court failed in its duty and then the High Court also had the power and the duty to insist that charges under section 302 ought to have been filed. Yet both the Trial Court and the High Court did not charge them under section 302.
The Supreme Court was constrained to say that both the trial Court and High Court have failed in their duty in this connection.
Justice Markandey Katju wrote, If ever there was a case which cried out for death penalty it is this one, but it is deeply regrettable that not only was no such penalty imposed but not even a charge under Section 302 IPC (for murder) was framed against the accused by the Courts below.
During the investigation in Padmini rape case the ADMK called her as a ‘loose woman of low character’. So also, in the case of rape of 4 Irula women last year the ADMK regime had submitted in the High Court that they were not raped by policemen. The question was then why did Jayalalitha sanctioned Rs. 5 lakhs each to those women as compensation.
Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi defined real freedom for India , as the day on which young woman wearing more jewels can freely and safely walk alone in a road at midnight .
Great poet Mahakavi Bharathi said “Let us set on flame the stupidity of disgracing women” and “Let us destroy the world if there is no food for and individual”.
Here, in Tamil Nadu with a woman at the helm of regime, not only an individual woman but even groups of women have no safety even in broad daylight.. What would Mahatma and Mahakavi say about this regime?
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