After ‘triple talaq’, Jharkhand woman accuses husband of rape, forced conversion

Source: hindustantimes.com

A woman has lodged a police complaint in Ranchi alleging that she was duped into marriage by a man who allegedly coerced her into embracing Islam and eating beef, raped her for six years, administered her sedatives to get her to have sexual relations with others, video graphed the act and finally divorced her by way of triple talaq.

She has identified the accused as Sonu alias Md Abul Kaish.

Based on the woman’s complaint, the police have registered an FIR under Sections 376 (rape), 376 (2) (g) (gang rape), 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) and various other sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

“We have started the investigation. As per our information, the accused is not in Ranchi. However, we will find out the truth and appropriate legal action will be taken,” Ranchi SP (rural) Ashutosh Shekhar said.

The accused, who is in Delhi, however, denied the allegations when contacted on phone.

According to the FIR, the woman, a resident of Ranchi, had joined an NGO as a counsellor in June 2013 where she came in contact with the accused.

“Sonu always used to put tilak on his forehead. In August, when I was ill, Sonu came to my residence and took me to see a doctor. On return, he gave me some pill after which I became unconscious,” the woman has alleged in the FIR. “Two days later, I found myself naked at Sonu’s house in Ranchi. When I tried to escape, he showed me some videos in which I was in lying naked with some other man.”

“Threatening to make these videos public, he asked me to follow his commands. One day, he asked me to wear a burqa (veil) and took me to a Qazi at Ranchi’s Doranda area. The Qazi made me to accept what he uttered. He then told me I had become a Muslim and my ‘nikah’ was solemnised with Md Abul Kaish,” the woman has said in her complaint.

“I then realised that Sonu was not a Hindu and I was converted into a Muslim. He later forced me to eat beef. After losing his job in Ranchi, he took me to Delhi in August 2016. There, I experienced worst form of torture. He used to come with some other person every night to commit gang rape,” the complaint reads.

In May this year, the accused had gone somewhere else, leaving her alone in Delhi. “I then came to my village and after some days, I went to Sonu’s ancestral house in Rajmahal. There, his family members refused to accept me saying Sonu already had a legitimate wife from the same community,” the complaint says.

The woman alleged she finally traced Sonu in Ranchi but he refused to accept her. In fact, he divorced her by way of triple talaq on July 27, 2019, she alleged.

Sonu (37) said, “I am a lawyer in Delhi. Baseless allegations have been levelled against me. When I was working with the NGO in Ranchi, the woman was introduced to me along with her brother. Her bother and I developed a good bond. When I shifted to Delhi, he once visited me seeking some job. I helped him to find a job in a cloth factory. Later, he had taken a loan of Rs 3.75 lakh from me to open a cloth shop in Ranchi. When I demanded the money back, they started threatening me with lodging a false case.”

Crimes against women on the rise in Bihar, MLA says incidents can’t be brought to zero

Source: zeenews.india.com

Recent weeks have seen a spurt in the rate of crimes against women in the state of Bihar which has put the glaring spotlight on the police and political machinery here. While opposition parties have upped the pressure on the government, BJP MLA Arun Sinha said that such crimes can be reduced but cannot be eliminated completely.

The political uproar in Bihar comes in the backdrop of rise in crimes against women with three incidents in the recent past adding fuel to fire. In a state where the crime graph has been steadily on the rise, incidents against women too have been reported. In one incident, three men allegedly raped a minor girl and then tried to kill her in Chapra. While cops arrested two of the accused, the third managed to flee. The minor is in a critical condition at PMCH Hospital.

In a separate incident, the body of a 16-year-old girl was recovered in a mutilated condition in Nalanda’s Baellor village. Cops say that the head was beaten with bricks in an attempt to conceal the identity of the victim who may have been raped before she was killed.

In the third gruesome incident. a minor girl was kept inside a hotel room for four days and repeatedly raped in Muffasil district of the state.

These three incidents, in particular, have inflamed political tensions with Congress spokesperson Rajesh Rathore saying that girls and women are not safe under the government of CM Nitish Kumar and Sushil Modi. “There are Nirbhaya-like incidents happening in Bihar everyday and the government is silent,” he said. RJD’s Mrityunjay Tiwari also echoed similar thoughts and said that the message of good governance is false.

In the government’s defence, JDU’s Rajeev Ranjan admitted that the recent crimes against women have been shocking. BJP’s Sinha, however, courted controversy while mounting a counter. “Such crimes can be brought down but cannot be eliminated completely,” he said. Sinha also appealed to people to come out and report such crimes.

There have been 605 rape cases which have been reported in Bihar between January and May of 2019. The maximum number of these have been in Patna – 41.

In 2018, 1475 cases of rape were reported across Bihar while 1195 cases in 2017 and 1008 cases were reported in 2016.

Ranchi cops rescue 10-year-old girl from sack

Source: telegraphindia.com

10-year-old homeless girl was dramatically rescued from a sack by Ranchi police near Albert Ekka Chowk on Sunday afternoon, with the youth carrying the gunny bag later confessing that he had kidnapped her with the intention to rape her.

Officer in-charge of Kotwali police station S.N. Mandal, under whom the area falls, said accused Sajan Ansari, of Nizam Nagar near Hindpiri, had drugged and kidnapped the girl in order to rape her.

Speaking to this paper, he said the girl was sitting on the roadside near Albert Ekka Chowk around 12.30pm with her maternal grandmother. The accused went up to them and offered them food mixed with intoxicants.

“Both the girl and the elderly woman fell unconscious. Ansari then put the girl in a big gunny bag and started walking away from the place. Some bystanders suspected he was carrying an animal in the sack. They raised an alarm and informed the police. We found the girl inside the sack,” said Mandal.

He added that the accused was booked under Sections 363 (kidnapping any person from lawful guardianship) and 370 (trafficking) of the IPC. The man was also forwarded to Birsa Munda Central Jail.

“During questioning, he confessed that he wanted to rape her and so he kidnapped her. He admitted he could have murdered her also after the rape,” said Mandal.

Mandal added Ansari’s criminal background, if any, was being investigated.

That a girl could be bundled into a sack in broad daylight from Albert Ekka Chowk could be an indicator of how vulnerable children are in the capital. Albert Ekka Chowk in the heart of the capital always remains crowded. But being a rainy Sunday, this afternoon happened to be a tad deserted.

Later, the girl was taken to the police station and given food and water. She said she was the eldest of the two daughters of her widowed mother and they used to live near Sujata Chowk in a slum. But, after their makeshift home collapsed, the family is homeless. She said she studied only up to Class I.

Asked about Ansari, she said she didn’t know who he was. “He came to us and gave us food. We were hungry so we had it. I want to go to my mother and sister. I don’t know where they are,” the little girl said.

Accidents, Intimidation And A Lot More. Even In 2019, Getting Justice For A Rape Survivor Remains A Huge Challenge

Source: indiatimes.com

On Sunday, July 29th a woman set herself on fire outside the Vaishali Nagar police station in Jaipur after the cops allegedly failed to act on a rape complaint she had filed over a month ago.

The woman, who is married and had a son had alleged that a relative had raped her and blackmailed for years while her husband, an army man was away for duty.

On Sunday, she reportedly went to the Police Station to meet the SHO and after it failed she took out petrol from her two-wheeler and set herself on fire. The woman who was seriously injured was rushed to a hospital where she died a day later. 

Her husband had alleged that the cops did not act on the complaint as they had taken a huge amount from the accused to hush up the case.

Last week, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had tweeted a video which was shot inside a police station in Kanpur.

In the video, the cops are seen harassing a 16-year-old girl after she went to the police station to file a complaint of molestation.

The cops instead of filing the FIR went on a victim-shaming spree and the head constable was even seen “interrogating” the teen.

He goes on to question why she was wearing jewellery like a ring and a necklace.

You don’t study. So much jewellery, why are you wearing it? What’s the use of these? This just shows what you really are,” the cop is heard saying in the video.

He then went on to give a lecture to the parents about the girl’s character.

A 17-year-old girl from Unnao, UP had filed a rape case against the local MLA Kuldeep Sengar in June 2017. But for nearly ten months nothing happened and in April 2018 the girl attempted to set herself on fire outside the residence of CM Yogi Adityanath to demand justice.  

These are three recent cases that have been once again highlighted the plight a rape or molestation victim has to go through to get justice.

These are not isolated cases, over the years there have been innumerable cases from across India where the rape survivor had to take the extreme step because the police failed to act on her complaint. 

Due to the stigma attached to being identified as a rape victim, the majority of rape incidents do not get reported and the victims will live a life of silent suffering. It takes a certain amount of courage and trust in the system for a rape survivor to come out and file a complaint. But once those who are supposed to give justice to her fails to do so, it is not just them failing, it is the system that failed the rape victim. She will then be forced to take desperate steps like a hunger strike, public protest or even suicide.

Rape victim who set herself on fire at Vaishali Nagar police station dies

Source: pinkcitypost.com

Jaipur: The rape victim who attempted suicide at Vaishali Nagar police station by setting herself afire over alleged police inaction succumbed to burn injuries early on Monday. The woman who accused policemen of not taking action against the manwho raped her even a month after she lodged an FIR was undergoing treatment at SMS Hospital with over 75% burn marks. The family members demanded action against police officials after the woman’s death.

The woman, a resident of Kachan Vihar area in Jaipur, had registered an FIR one Ravindra Singh, belonging to Fatehpur Shekhawati about a month ago. The woman in the FIR stated that her husband was posted in army. Ravindra had come to her house with her husband nearly four years ago. Her husband went to Jammu and Kashmir on duty, but Ravindra kept visiting her house in his absence. Ravindra took her to the house of his friend one day on some pretext and made her have cold drink laced with drugs. He then raped her.

The woman visited the Vaishali Nagar police station almost daily after registering the FIR demanding action against the accused, but she alleged that the police officials were supporting the accused, not her. They accused her of registering a bogus complaint and pressurized her to withdraw the case. They even allegedly misbehaved with her.

The woman came to Vaishali Nagar police station along with her 13-year-old son. She set herself afire on the police station premises. The son started crying for help. A constable, Amar Singh, sustained serious burns while trying to rescue the woman.

She was rushed to the burn ward of SMS Hospital where doctors declared him around 5 am on Monday.

2 women assaulted, tonsured for resisting rape bid by councillor in Bihar

Source: hindustantimes.com

A 48-year-old woman and her newly married 19-year-old daughter were ‘punished’ in Vaishali’s Bihari village for protesting against a rape bid by a local ward councillor. The police said that ward councillor Mohammad Khurshid and his henchmen assaulted the women, shaved their head and paraded them across the village. The ward councillor, a barber and three others were arrested by the police on Thursday, after a video of the incident went viral on social media.

Sanjay Kumar, station house officer (SHO) of the Bhagwanpur police station confirmed the incident and said that the matter is under investigation. He said that half a dozen people barged into the victims’ house and attempted to rape the daughter. After the mother tried to rescue her daughter, the accused physically assaulted the two women.

One of the accused beat them with wooden sticks, dragged them outside their house and held a ‘panchayat’. Khurshid called a barber and ordered him to shave the women’s heads, and paraded them across the village.“Around 6.30 pm, half a dozen armed men forcibly entered my house and attempted to rape me. When my mother tried to save me, they started beating us,” the one of the victims told the police.

Eyewitnesses said that Khurshid alleged that the duo was involved in a flesh trade racket.

A case has been registered against seven people under sections 376 (punishment for rape), 511 (punishment for attempting