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NCW demands judicial inquiry into nuns' rape

Amberish K Diwanji in New Delhi

A fact-finding team of the National Commission for Women which visited Jhabua district in Madhya Pradesh and met the four nuns who were brutally attacked by a gang of 21 men there has demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident.

The NCW team suspects that the incident is not just a case of rape, molestation and robbery, but points to a larger conspiracy.

The incident, coming barely two months before the assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, has embarrassed the Congress government of Digvijay Singh.

The crime acquired political and communal colour after Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader and former BJP member of Parliament B L Sharma 'Prem' justified the gang-rape as the result of "the anger of patriotic, angry Hindus".

Following an outcry, the VHP distanced itself from the incendiary statement, and the organisation's general secretary Giriraj Kishore condemned the rapes. But the damage had been done.

The Bharatiya Janata Party also sees a political conspiracy in the rapes, but directed against itself. "Fifteen days later, four tribal girls were raped in interior Madhya Pradesh. How come this tragedy received so little publicity?" wondered a BJP official. "After all, this crime is just as bad."

He put the difference in the outcry from the public and the media down to "a political conspiracy".

The BJP sees the highlighting of the nuns' rape as part of a game plan to discredit the party at a time when it is expected to sweep the elections in Madhya Pradesh, where the ruling Congress is being perceived as having failed on various counts. It suspects that the gang-rape is being used by the Congress to keep its support base among the tribals and the minorities intact.

"If anything, the party in power in the state should have been held responsible for breakdown of law and order," the BJP official mentioned earlier argued. "It should be made answerable for the rape of the nuns and the tribal women. This attempt to blame a certain political party or VHP activists is just an attempt to score points and scare the people away from us."

The BJP official said that according to their sources, the nuns were raped because of some altercation with the villagers who live nearby.

He admitted, however, that Sharma's statement had damaged the party's image. "The BJP would have gained politically, but after his statements, we are on the defensive."

But NCW member Syeda Sayideen Hameeda, who was part of the team that visited Jhabua, countered these charges, saying, "The Adivasis have never been know to rape women. That is why we find it difficult to believe that on a given night, 15 to 20 Adivasis gathered to rape the nuns".

She said the NCW team came across one report of a man owing the nuns some money and getting angry when asked to pay up, "but it is too small a reason for such a heinous crime".

But Hameeda feared the altercation might be used to cover up the actual crime, allowing the real culprits to go scot-free.

She said the NCW found that relations between the nuns and the villagers were cordial. She pointed out that "the villagers depended on the nuns for small medical help and informal education because there is no government machinery present".

She denied the charge of bias in the NCW's investigation. "A rape is a rape, we should not politicise it. The NCW checked out the nuns' rape because we were given a mandate to do so. We are most willing to check every rape incident, but we are not allowed to conduct investigations, hence we want a judicial probe," she explained.

As for the charge of politically motivated publicity, she said, "Every rape case should receive publicity so that it forces the government to take action against the culprits. That is the need of the hour."

With elections round the corner, the BJP's antipathy to the missionaries well known, and a Congress government desperate to prevent its fall, a clear-cut criminal case has been converted into political cannon fodder. Meanwhile, the nuns suffer in silence.

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