Jaipur:
An uneducated and poor tribal woman from Rajasthan, fighting for justice after she was raped, faces a lonely and tough battle. Now factor in the fact that the man who allegedly raped her is a senior police officer in Rajasthan, and you get some idea of what the victim has gone through.
Her husband worked as Madhukar Tandon's gunman 13 years ago when the police officer allegedly called her to his home in Noida, a Delhi suburb, and repeatedly raped her.
When she left, she filed a police case against Tandon. But the policeman was on leave and disappeared. Since then, the police claim it hasn't been able to trace him. Bizarrely, during this time, Tandon has managed to sell property worth crores in Jaipur. That's forced the government to acknowledge that Tandon could hardly be impossible to find. "It looks like he used his influence to evade arrest. It could not have been possible that no one knew his whereabouts. It is a very serious matter," says Shanti Dhariwal, the Rajasthan Home Minister.
"I want justice. Help me with getting justice," says the woman who was allegedly raped, and whose case has shot into attention with prominent Meena leader Kirori Lal championing her cause. "In their manifesto of 1998, Congress had promised the arrest of Madhukar Tandon but so far no one has brought him to book. I don't understand why are no actions taken against influential people," he says.
It's a question that India asks repeatedly, and one that's searing its conscience since it became clear that another senior policeman, this time from Haryana, molested a teenager, Ruchika Girhotra, in 1990, and virtually got away with it for 19 years. In that case, too, a police force seemed to close ranks to protect one of its own, while politicians allowed a criminal offender to enjoy a fruitful career.