Kolkata:
An adivasi teen was stripped and molested in full public view; the walk of shame was the entire village.
In a tiny hut in a village seven hours by road from Kolkata, we find the family we are looking for. A middle-aged couple is at home. They last saw their only daughter five days ago.
Strangers have encountered their child in a horrific MMS. As she walks along, naked, hundreds of villagers cheer. She is paraded for close to 8 kilometres across three villages. A dozen men reach out and grab her at different points in her journey. This was how the locals decided to punish the teenager for dating a young Muslim man. As if that weren't traumatic enough, the men who molested her - and those in the crowd - filmed the grotesquerie on their cellphones. In the most damning sort of irony, it was one of those MMSes that finally brought help. Three months after the shameful incident, the police and media saw the video.
Six of the men seen molesting the teenager have been arrested. The police are looking for another six. Please don't, says the girl's father. The whole village turned against their daughter, first, he says, now they could seek revenge for those who've been arrested. "I wasn't there so who will I punish? The girl also didn't recognise anybody" he says as explanation for why he didn't go to the police. His wife and he worry they will be driven to leave their home.
The villagers we meet offer little to prove him wrong. "The girl had been warned against associating with this boy from another community. It is not acceptable in our society," says Sonamukhi. She is supported by Tina Murmu, who adds, "If they had at least got married, the society may have accepted it. But they were not getting married, just going around. The boys of the village didn't take it well."
This village panchayat is run by the CPM. But even the Pradhan or Head of the Panchayat, a man named Mangal Baskey, failed to report the incident, leave alone the police or local district officials for help. "How could I tell the police? I met the girl and the father and they were not willing to file a case," he asks.
The teen's parents say they want a sort of out-of-court settlement or informal agreement on how to punish the molesters. Not acceptable to local officials whiplashed from the public exposure of their utter ignorance of what had transpired.
The teenager is being kept at a safe location by officials about 10 km from her village. What's uncertain for her is whether she will ever be able to return home. Instead of being ashamed of what it put her through, the place where she grew up seems hungry to prove she got what she deserved.