The phenomenon of sexual abuse of the young, of widows and other single women is more than evident in the daily newspapers. In the recent years we have seen many sex-blackmail-prostitution rackets. Saturday (3rd December 2005) saw another case hearing of an on-going case, which once again gave no verdict but was further postponed to another date. The same case has been dragging on in the Rajasthan courts for the past 13 years. This very case had rocked a small town of ‘Ajmer’ in 1992, with the infamous photo blackmail sex racket. The biggest sex scandal to have been witnessed in India till date.
The racket when it came to light had shaken the town dwellers and shocked the country with its magnitude, depravity and perversion. A place known for Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti’s dargah and Brahma temple became identified with the most heinous sex racket of the country. The Ajmer sex scandal had hit the national dailies, when it was found that a gang of people befriended school girls, raped them, took photographs in compromising positions and used these to exploit them. According to the reports more than 200 girls had fallen prey to these scrupulous men.
In 1998, eight of the accused were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment by District court. Of the remaining eight accused, Farooq Chishti, a former Youth Congress leader, was reported to have lost his mental balance and turned schizophrenic. His trial is still pending. Another accused, Purushottam ( but according to few reports is said to be alive), was said to have committed suicide with his wife soon after he was released on bail on March 8, 1994. Six others, including the two main accused, Nafees Chishti and Sohail Ghani, had disappeared and remain traceless.
It’s appalling to see that the 1st judgment came after six years of tortuous proceedings. According to the police and women NGOs, it was a tough case to build, with most of the victims reluctant to come forward and pursue the matter. Of the girls suspected to have been subjected to rape and blackmail, 30 were identified in the investigations; only about a dozen had filed cases and of these 10 later backed out. Only two resolutely pursued the case.
Most of the victims faced harassment and threats with no support from the society and even the families. According to police investigations, about half a dozen girls were suspected to have been driven to suicide. Ajmer Mahila Samooh, which tried to take up the cause of the victims, soon withdrew following threats to its activists. With reluctance of girls to come forward, it was the photographs and videos used for blackmail which came in handy in identifying the accused and building the case against them.
However later on, the High Court acquitted four by reducing their life sentence to 10 years imprisonment but maintained the life sentence on the other four. The State Government had appealed against the acquittal in the Supreme Court while the four had challenged their conviction. Finally in 2004, the Supreme court Dismissed both the appeals filed by the State as well as the convicted persons, a Bench comprising Justice N Santosh Hegde and Justice B P Singh said “having regard to the facts and circumstances of the case, we are of the view that the ends of justice would be met if the sentence is reduced to ten years rigorous imprisonment.”
Today, the case is collecting dust in the Rajasthan courts though according to the police the search is still on for the ones absconding, it is unlikely that they will ever be found and made to pay for their hideous crime. As for likes ‘Farooq Chishti’ and ‘Purushottam’, they continue to go with their lives under the protection of our very system, while many girls till today bear the brunt of the crimes committed by others.
This aberration, if you like, is symptomatic of an undercurrent of sexual violence. It also tells us something about the vulnerability of young women. Social values are changing and it is not uncommon to see young boys and girls together in movies, cafes, picnics and so on. Films, advertisements and popular media send mixed messages. Therefore, if a girl happens to have sexual relations with a boy, she is a vulnerable target for blackmail. The Ajmer and Jalgaon (both traditional, small towns) blackmail rackets thrived on this contradiction. Casual contact leading to casual sex landed the girls into frightening spiral of rape, blackmail and prostitution. Gang rape of unwitting victims have, hit the headlines on several occasions.
The Ajmer and Jalgaon cases were not only hushed up by the administration but even, the parents wanted to keep it out of the press. When one girl in Jaipur finally mustered up the courage to expose it (the infamous J C Bose Hostel gang rape case), the entire media, the administration and even the ‘respectable’ community leaders called the girl a nymphomaniac and a prostitute who was having ‘fun’.
Despite the growing incidence of this kind of sexual racket, we are not willing to come to terms with the sexuality of the young even to educate them to protect themselves or seek help.
(Some information on the case verdict has been collected from newspaper articles and Law websites)
A really good write up on “Need for Speedier Criminal Procedure“ by Leena Mehendale.
wanting to scream out loud, hoping that so-called “TV gurus†would hear our plead one day. This entry was posted on Friday, October 28th, 2005 at 9:02 am and is filed under Lists, Humor, India. You can follow any responses to this entry through theRSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. 46 Responses to “The old “idiot†box…†sowmya Says: October 28th, 2005 at 12:08 pm First time here. Your post took me through a nostalgic journey down DD lane. Indeed the
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