''I need a gun for protection"

Women seldom speak in Nadapuram, a Muslim stronghold in Kozhikode, Kerala, also popular for violence in the name of politics. A month ago, a young mother and her child were molested. As government authorities and politicians continue to spew indifference, the victim and her family stand to face social contempt and a bleak future. LEELA MENON writes.

POLITICISATION of issues is beginning to dehumanise Kerala and the victims are increasingly women. That violence against women is on the increase in the State has been statistically proved, with the Vanitha Commission itself admitting that there were 3,165 rapes committed in the last 10 years in Kerala. Women seldom admit to the fact that they have been physically abused or molested. Statistics reveal that there were 27,625 atrocities against women since this Government came to power. Tragically, abuse of women is becoming a plank for parties to score political points.

If it was Kannur which was soaked in the tears of women who lost sons, husbands and brothers as political vendettas unspooled, with a death toll of 388 in the last few years, Nadapuram in Kozhikode has virtually become a backdrop for rape, molestation, arson and robbery, all in the guise of settling political scores. While murder and mutilation characterised political clashes in Kannur and elsewhere, Nadapuram is registering an entirely new phenomena: it is here that the honour of women and the innocence of children are scarred and marred.

No woman likes to admit that she has been the victim of an attempted rape or that her eight-year-old daughter was molested. It is traumatic and it dooms them to a life of ostracism and social ridicule. Yet, if a woman, and that too a reflexively reclusive Muslim woman comes forward to accuse her neighbours of molesting her and file a case before the police, there should be some truth to the allegation.

Nafisa is 38. Her daughter is eight. On January 15, Nafisa was molested by a gang of four. They formed a part of a 15-member squad which broke into her house. "They rushed into my house and demanded the key to my almirah. They took jewellery worth 50 sovereigns and the Rs. 25,000 which I had kept aside for my sister who is building a house. Then they severed the electric connection and grabbed me. Four of them disrobed me and tried to violate me. I had to fight tooth and nail to prevent them from ruining me. As they were trying to pin me down, the hand of one of the men edged close to my mouth and I bit it hard. He shrieked and let me go!" Nafisa narrated the incident, tears coursing down her cheeks and dousing her purdah. Had she been the only victim, perhaps the story would have remained her private shame and nightmare. What made Nafisa expose the inhuman incident was the attack on her eight-year-old daughter.

"They grabbed my daughter also. I begged them to leave her alone but they carried her out and molested her as well." How does an eight-year-old describe the brutal violation of her innocence? "They made me lie on an iron rod. One man choked me around my neck and two others"... her words broke and her breath came in spasms. She has no words to describe the despicable act, no child has, except look up at you in total abject confusion. "Afterwards she could not pass urine and I had to take her to the doctor. It was this that made me go to the police and now reveal the facts to you," Nafisa admits.

"This is not all. My 15-year-old son was a witness to the despicable attempts to disrobe me and molest his sister. He hugged me but they pulled him out and threw him and pinned him down as they were violating us." The son nods his head in agreement, dumb in his anguish and agony. Psychiatrists say the incident can doom his psyche forever.

Nafisa's agonised humiliation did not end there. After she was freed by the rampaging gang, a stark-naked Nafisa had to walk to the neighbour's house with her children for help. "The neighbours gave me water and clothes to wear. Even there the hooligans came and threw stones."

While Nafisa has come out openly against the attempts at molestation, identifying three of the four men who dishonoured her, even filing a charge in the police station, there are other women who have been molested and remain silent, frozen in fear of social ostracism and political revenge. She was able to identify the men because they had lit a fire in the room before trying to ravish her, according to Nafisa. "They are men who come habitually to my house to use my phone or borrow money from me. Their women come to watch TV in my house," she revealed. "My husband is in the Gulf. I rang him up and narrated the dreadful story. He cried over the phone and wanted to come home immediately but I begged him not to because I am afraid they would kill him," Nafisa admits.

Does she apprehend a thalaaq after the gang violation? "No. He knows I am a woman of character and he loves me," Nafisa says. "My daughter is growing up. Isn't her future ruined?" Nafisa asks in distress. "I am also afraid that they would kill us if we emerge from the house."

And then she makes a strange request. "Will you recommend to the Government to give me a gun? I need a gun to protect myself." A quiet Muslim woman seeking a gun for self-protection on her own turf!

Moidu Haji was slashed by a sickle and then his neck was sawed away in front of his wife and daughter. "Will we ever be able to forget the sight?" the daughter asks while the wife, struck dumb with grief, only gesticulates. "We never sleep. We light a lamp and keep awake," admits Chaki, aged 78, a passer-by.

Yet, the rape and molestations are denied vehemently by MP Premajam. "No ruling party can live down atrocities like rape of women or hooch tragedies and go confident to contest an election." The police have also been low-key, taking no action to arrest the accused, alleging that the woman lacks credibility, inviting charges that the force is politicised. Nadapuram has currently become a political theatre, with the Marxist Party attributing the violence to the National Democratic Front, a Muslim extremist organisation and the RSS, and not as a clash between Muslim League and the Marxists, though the victims are Muslims and Marxist Party members. That the violence in Nadapuram erupted in the aftermath of a discussion for a tie-up between the Muslim League and the Marxist Party is also a pointer. "Harkishen Singh Surjith speaks of minority protection in the North and his Party is committing these atrocities here," commented MP E. Ahmed. "We want peace, peace not out of weakness but out of strength," he added.

Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer, who visited Nadapuram, is also amazed at the indifference of the authorities. "This woman has been crying for hours, not only before me but before various people and yet no action has been taken to arrest the culprit," he commented. "A rape is a rape, a scounderly act and should not be politicised."

According to him, it is the Muslim League which has failed in Nadapuram. "It is a Muslim majority area, they have financial stamina, yet they are being cowardly. The police is inactive. The man whom she bit is hospitalised and he can be easily identified but nothing has been done," he regretted.

About Sonia Gandhi's offer of Rs. 25,000 to Nafisa, Justice Iyer said: "What can Rs. 25,000 do? Buy her a sari? Her loss is not money, but dignity. Sonia Gandhi should have asked where the police was; where the FIR is." According to him, the police filed the FIR in the case only much later. Justice Iyer has sent a letter to the Chief Minister and the Director General of Police.

But can Nafisa erase the past, find a panacea for the psychological trauma of her family? Will women walk safe in Nadapuram again?

Nadapuram is not the only issue that has been politicised by parties. The Thankamani rape in the 1990s figures as an election plank for the Marxists.

As also the Surianelli rape which involved a Congress MP. Currently even the sex scandal in the Cochin University of Science and Technology is grill for the political mills. Can women be more devalued?

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : The magic of Buddhist art
Next     : Where do little boys come from?