A labour of love from HAQ CRC, India

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A Labour of Love by Shreeradha Mishra
Internship Period: May 25th
, 2015 to June 30th
, 2015

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A Labour of Love
The twenty odd pages that follow are the product of the title above, which says –
“A Labour of Love”. The stories are an outcome of my observations on the field
through the lens of the legal system and the pyscho-social impacts on the child
survivors of sexual violence and their families, during a six week long internship at
HAQ: Centre for Child Rights. The experience has been emotionally exhausting
and a reminder of the fact that we all live in a bubble at some point of time in our
lives.
I hope my stories speak of the following elements, around which I have made an
effort to ground the case stories.
• Understanding of sexual abuse, perceptions, biases and openness to report
sexual abuse
• Information regarding conviction and acquittal – is the family aware of the
outcome of the case (where a case has been disposed of), source of
information, reactions to the outcome.
• The child and the family‟s understanding of “conviction”, in the cases where
there has been a conviction.
• If there has been a conviction, how has it made a difference?
• Understanding the driving force behind the motivation to fight for justice
• The overall experience of the litigants/survivor with the judicial process
(experience with the Police, Child Welfare Committee, Hospital, Court and
the concerned NGO).
• The change in social dynamics for the child and the family.
• What has been the family‟s role for counseling and rehabilitation of the child
survivor?

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I hope in the stories of Rini, Rosy, Sameer, Masoom, Rosheena, Astha1
and their
families , you find threads of similarities running from your own experiences or
experiences of others you are aware of. I hope they are a solemn reminder of the
mammoth tasks we, as a society, need to accomplish in order to make the world a
safer place for children.
I would also like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude to Ms.
Bharti Ali, Co-Director at HAQ: Centre for Child Rights for trusting me with such
a sensitive task and for her patient mentoring, Ms. Enakshi Ganguly Thukral, Co-
Director at HAQ for her support, and to my colleagues, professors, friends and
family for being constant sources of inspiration to spur me on.
With hope, and prayers for peace and faith, I quote these beautiful lines by Norman
Allen:
“Lord, I don't ask for a faith
that would move yonder mountain.
I can take enough dynamite and move
it if it needs movin'. I pray, Lord,
for enough faith to move me.”
Shreeradha Mishra
30.06.2015
1
The names of all persons have been changed in order to protect identities.

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“I love drawing flowers” – Rini, 4.
“Mujhe uss ko jail mein dekhna hai, tabhi mujhe insaaf milega” (“I will feel justice
has been done only if I see him in jail”). Protima is four year old Rini‟s mother.
When asked what would help her feel that justice has been done because of what
happened to Rini, she says she wants to see her child‟s abuser in jail. Protima has
not been able to reconcile to the fact that the boy who violated her baby walks free
today, and got away with little or no punishment at all. Worse, she does not
understand how the law can justify that he deserves another chance because he is a
juvenile! Her daughter was 3 when she was abused by seventeen year old Ricky.
She cannot wrap her head around the fact that Ricky is being let off because he is a
„child‟. Neither can she comprehend a child committing such a heinous crime.
Amidst tears and sighs, she forces words to explain her predicament.
The juvenile lives diagonally opposite to her jhuggi2
, barely five steps away. Prior
to the incident, Protima used to work in a plastic industry, as a contract labourer to
make boxes. On the day of the abuse, she came home to a bleeding and crying
Rini. Protima couldn‟t fathom what might have happened and was wondering if
Rini had started menstruating. But she was just three and that didn‟t seem a
possible conclusion. On probing, Rini told her mother that she had been lured by
Ricky into his room on the pretext of letting her watch television. Later he had
undressed her and forced himself on her. Protima took her to a nearby clinic where
the doctor confirmed that her child had been raped.
Rini‟s is a family of four – she shares the tiny room with her parents and her elder
sister who is seven. Her father is a contract labourer, working for an iron scrap
dealer. The room is basic but cleaner than its surroundings. A few flies buzz
around from the open drain that flows just outside the jhuggi. The children
defecate and urinate in the open. The narrow lane which separates one row of
jhuggis from another, is their playground. The room radiates familial warmth
through the objects it has housed, depicting normalcy and stability in their lives. An
apparent normalcy and stability! Three neatly arranged dolls on a rickety plywood
2
A slum dwelling made of mud and corrugated iron

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shelf, a broken toy car and a tiny television on the edge of the shelf. A gas stove on
the ledge and a few jars containing the basic ingredients - salt, oil, et al. Their other
belongings stashed away in neatly stacked boxes under the makeshift bed.
“Someone suggested I dial 1003
”, Protima said. “Then we went to the police.” The
police took their statement and said they would arrest the boy. After three days
Protima saw the boy in his house and went to the police station, and asked the
senior inspector why the boy wasn‟t in the lock up. In response, she was warned by
the police not to tell them about how they should be doing their job. She said,
“Bade sahab ne hum pe bahut chillaya,” (“the senior police officer yelled at me”).
They also threatened to throw her out of the police station if she didn‟t stop
bothering them, she said.
“Were the doctors rude?”
“No.”
“Were the judges rude?”
“No.”
“Is the case over?”
“Yes.”
“How did you come to know the case is over?”
“When people here told me that the boy‟s family is giving us money.”
“They were saying we did all this on purpose because we wanted the money. Why
would I want the money? Was I prostituting my daughter? I told them I don‟t want
the money, I want justice, I want to see my child‟s offender in prison. They told me
that is not possible, and that‟s why they offered me money?” says Protima,
caressing Rini absent mindedly, tears streaming down her face.
Her two children look up from their colouring and realize their mother is crying,
they cling to her and wipe her tears. The older one (seven years) rebukes her, asks
her to be strong. Protima continues, she describes how the abuse has affected her
daughter psychologically. “Rini never changes her clothes in front of anyone, not
even in front of her sister, let alone her father.” Expecting privacy while bathing or
tending to nature calls when you live in a slum is nothing short of expecting
3
100 is the number for police helpline in India

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luxury. Rini however, under no circumstance allows anyone to so much as cast a
glance while she goes about her daily chores of bathing and washing, apart from
her mother.
She alleges that the offender is not a child, she says they have botched up his
school certificates to prove he is a minor. Protima adds, “Why should I be ashamed
of what happened? My daughter didn‟t do anything. Why did he have to do it with
my daughter? Usko koi shauk tha toh mujhe bolta (“He could‟ve come to me if he
had some fetish”). Had this happened to my older daughter the society would‟ve
said it was her fault. But Rini was just three. How can it be her fault? They
continue to harass us, they refuse to share water, since part of the cost of the water
pipe was borne by them. I never get sufficient water. The lady next door is
pregnant and at times I give her some water, they have a problem with that also.”
When asked if the child has been stigmatized by the community, she says, “no, all
the kids play with her as before. No child is allowed to go close to that boy. I don‟t
even let Rini look at him”.
Otherwise a very chirpy child, Rini turns stiff when someone talks about the abuse.
She refuses anything ever happened. She says she doesn‟t even know the boy. But
says “yes” when asked if he hurt her. Protima says she never talks about what
happened and neither does she encourage it. It is best if they all forget about it, she
adds. Her tears betray the conviction with which she said they would forget it.
They are looking for another accommodation and wish to relocate.
Only four, Rini has already started school, can write her own name and recite
poems fluently. She wants to be a police officer when she grows up. All that the
two children have had since morning is a cup of tea each.

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“My son loves moong dal ka halwa”, - Sameer’s (15) mother, Afreen.
Sameer is a fifteen year old boy. A lean, tall boy, Sameer looks like any other city
bred child but has a physical feature that would set him apart from the rest of the
kids his age. It is the uniform black patches on his cheeks – the first thing anyone
would notice on meeting him.
Sameer lives in a humble one BHK home with his parents and younger sister. The
house is their own, with the bottom floor let out on rent. His mother is a beautician
and his father is a driver at a call centre. He drives his own vehicle bought through
a bank loan.
“He has gone for a haircut”, Nazreen, his mother, says. A loquacious and lively
lady, she steers most of the conversation and recalls the ordeal of the past years,
with her eyes getting misty. “It has been a harrowing experience building the
house”, she says, “The Municipal Corporation of Delhi had almost bulldozed it”.
Life has not been easy for Sameer‟s family. Neither is it easy to get someone to
recollect a troubled past. But Nazreen seems to have overcome her fears and does
not shy from talking about the financial and emotional stress that the family has
been through. She takes a deep breath and talks about the four boys who abused
and sodomized her son, about how it shredded his self-confidence and its effect on
his psyche and academics, about him failing his 9th
standard exams and being too
embarrassed to let anyone know.
Sameer enters the room, sits awkwardly for a while and then leaves. He is
extremely reserved and not surprisingly, does not like speaking about the past.
Whatever we know of him, and about what happened is through his mother‟s
perspective.
One day he came back from school, with his trousers torn and his body burning
with fever. Nazreen thought he had torn his clothes while playing, and that the
fever was probably due to exhaustion. In the evening, a visibly perturbed Sameer
approached her, “I need to tell you something, but you will be angry, Papa will be
angry.” After a lot of cajoling, Nazreen managed to get him to speak. Sameer
narrated everything, he took off his pants and showed his mother the cuts on his

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thighs. “Why didn‟t you tell me before?” asked his mother. “I was scared, of them
and of you and papa.”
They wanted money and asked Sameer to steal from his parents. Sameer did not
relent. That was the beginning of the abuse – physical, psychological and
emotional, which lasted for an entire year. Finally one day, Sameer broke the
silence and confided in his mother. Nazreen was horrified. She could not believe
what her son had been going through and it took her some effort to accept the fact
that “it” happened to boys as well. Sameer had been threatened with his life;, if he
so much so breathed a word to anyone, they would kill him. The abuse was so
severe and violent that Sameer completely believed them and kept shut. They used
to sodomize him in the forest area close to his school; all four took turns to abuse,
while three other would hold him back. There was a daldal (quicksand) in the
vicinity. They took him there and showed it to him, threatening that he would end
up there if he let anybody know about what they were doing to him.
“I used to take care of him as if he were a new born baby. He needed, and wanted
my constant attention. I quit my job. He wouldn‟t even let me go to the bathroom, I
could do the household chores only when he was asleep. He would be so scared
that one night he even wet the bed. If you noticed the black marks on his cheek, he
has done that to himself. He would sit quietly in a corner, lost in thoughts and
would keep picking at his cheeks, until they bled.”
Nazreen shudders as she recalls the trauma her family went through. The school
authorities weren‟t helpful in the least (Sameer changed his school after the
incident). They did not even help the parents locate the families of the children,
who were being evasive for a long time. Only when Nazreen and her husband
threatened to call the press to the school, the authorities intervened and called the
parents of the children involved. Sameer‟s parents lodged an FIR with the police.
The case was disposed off within a year, keeping in spirit with the POCSO4
provisions and the juvenile justice law. All four offenders were convicted. They
were sent to a special home for boys, though they did not stay there for very long.
In between the court and police station visits, there were several visits to the
doctor. Nazreen feared whether his son had been rendered impotent by the abuse
and if he would have a “normal married life”, in the future. The doctors assured her
that there would be no problem of the sort. She is worried about the beating his
self- confidence has taken and wants to send him to judo classes so that he can
4
The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.

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learn self-defense and at the same time has a way of expressing his frustration.
“Budget thoda theek hojaye bas”( I am just waiting for my budget to work out).
Nazreen‟s faith in the system was extinguished like a sodden match after her
experience. She recalls how the four boys would shoot threatening glances at
Sameer even inside the court (the Juvenile Justice Board in this case). She spoke
about the absolute lack of realization on behalf of the offenders regarding the
intense amount of harm their barbaric acts had caused Sameer, which has
completely crippled his self-confidence.
“A few weeks ago, my son was going to a fair, just behind our house, right there”,
she said, pointing to a field outside the window, barely fifty meters away. “One of
them came on a bike and circled around my son, smirked at him and sped off. As if
to show him that he is as free as a bird and the conviction has had no effect
whatsoever, on him.”
Nazreen mulls over the hopelessness of the legal system and questions the point of
fighting the case when it did not even get her son an apology from those who had
scarred him for life. At the same time she says she understands the law cannot
mete out rigorous punishment to them since they are juveniles, but the least she
expected was for them to realize what they had done and apologize to her son. She
expected a dialogue with the parents of the guilty, a dialogue between Sameer and
those boys mediated by the court, and hoped they would be able to accept the
wrong and realize what it means to abuse and be abused.
“Sameer is still scared of them. He still cannot face any one of them. Isn‟t it them
who should be scared and ashamed?”

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“I love buying presents for my family” – Rosheena, 16.
“They feel that their mothers and sisters are their own, while women outside of
their families are just toys who can be used for pleasure and discarded at their
whim and fancy. These people should never get out of jail and this should not
happen to any girl”. These powerful words come from Rosheena who is all of
sixteen. Her home is a two room pukka space inside the Nizamuddin Dargha. One
can barely call it a house. Rosheena‟s grandfather was a caretaker at the dargha and
was granted residence inside the dargha ever since. The family continues to live
there. It is a two-room house, currently occupied by Rosheena and her family
comprising five members, and another four members belonging to her married
sister‟s family, which include two toddlers.
Rosheena was abducted by three men when she was just about fourteen. She was
on her way to the market in her neighborhood along with two of her friends, and
was nabbed by two men (who she knew) in a dark alleyway. When she turned
around for help, her friends had left. These men were friends of her brother and she
had seen them at home a few times. They asked her to come with her, when she
didn‟t comply, they drugged her and kidnapped her in a semi-conscious state.
“I knew what was happening to me. They put me on a bike. One of them was
riding the bike and one of them sat behind me. I wanted to scream, I wanted to free
myself, but my body just wouldn‟t listen to me. It was as though I had absolutely
no control over my body. I was familiar with the route until we crossed Kale Khan,
after that I had no idea where they were taking me. They took me to a room where
the third man was waiting. Thereafter, they took turns to rape me.”
Rosheena stayed in that room for a little over a week, and went through the daily
ordeal of being raped. It was almost ritualistic. She had no appetite and her
memory is fragmented by the trauma she has gone through, and also because of the
constant drugs that were injected into her body. She barely ate or drank anything,
except for when they violently forced her to, so that she wouldn‟t die. They had
bigger plans for her. She was sold to a Monica, a woman who ran a brothel, for
two lacs.

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A preparation regime was set in place to train her as a prostitute. In order to
enlarge her bosom and make her look more womanly, a daily dose of steroids was
administered to her. She was taken shopping to buy clothes of the “latest styles”, as
she puts it. Tight t-shirts, tank tops, jeans and long dresses which revealed more
than they covered, just like they show in movies. Once, while Monica was busy
choosing costumes for her, she tried to run away, only to find two of the men who
had kidnapped her blocking either exits of the lane which would have led to her
freedom. She did not have the choice of shouting out loud, they had scared her
with guns. In fact, once Monica had demonstrated to her that the guns they had
weren‟t toy guns, contrary to what Rosheena believed. She took her to a room and
fired a shot at the wall. Rosheena still puts her hands to cover her ears as she
describes the deafening impact the shot had. Monica spent the next half hour
digging out the bullet from the wall, lest it proved as evidence against them in the
case of a raid.
Her training regime included a daily exposure to pornographic movies, a “watch
and learn technique”. Then, she was instructed to practice likewise with the three
men who had abducted her, and was warned to do exactly what the customer
wanted. She said, “I used to wonder, do they do this with their mothers and sisters
as well?” She would be “on duty” even when she was menstruating. Rosheena
recalls one incident where a customer asked her to run away with him. He would
ask Monica to put her on night duty and then they could run away, get married and
he would set her free. Rosheena knew it was a trap, she knew she would go
through the same things she had been going through thus far, if not worse. She told
Monica about the man the next day and he was never seen in the brothel thereafter.
Competition in the business of sex trafficking could be fierce, who but Monica
would understand that better?
Rosheena made several unsuccessful attempts at escaping, and once even helped
another girl escape. She was beaten up black and blue post that incident. “Monica
used to beat me up frequently. So much that even the spoons she used to hit me
with would bend. I wasn‟t allowed to talk to any other girl. They kept us isolated
from each other”, she said. She was with them for an entire year, after which she
finally managed to escape. She found someone‟s phone and dialed her mother‟s
number. Even though she didn‟t utter a word on the phone, her mother‟s instinct
knew it was Rosheena as she could hear sobs from the other end when she
enquired desperately if it was her. The number was traced by the police and

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Rosheena finally came home. Almost a year passed by before Rosheena was
recovered and restored to her family.
Her parents had filed a missing persons‟ complaint hoping that the police would
help them find their daughter. After a long wait of seven months and repeated
requests to the concerned police officer, the family finally sought help from
Sharan, an NGO working on drug de-addiction in the Nizamuddin Basti. Sharan
referred the case to HAQ: Centre for Child Rights. A habeas corpus petition had to
be filed to get the police into action. By this time another three months had
elapsed. In a case where perhaps every second mattered, the delays only added to
Rosheena and her family‟s suffering. The local police had failed to even trace the
mobile numbers from which Rosheena had tried to call her mother at different
points of time. Who would have thought that a Delhi girl would be trafficked to
some far off district of West Bengal? People would think that it is the other way
round i.e. girls are trafficked from poverty stricken areas to the cities. Perhaps
Rosheena‟s is not the first case of its kind. But she and her family have lost faith in
the system in many ways.
Even after her recovery, no arrests were made for a long time and HAQ had to
meet a senior police official to get the case transferred to the Anti-Human
Trafficking Unit, wondering why these special units are set up if they are not
supposed to function. For poor, illiterate parents with scarce resources, none of this
would have ever been possible on their own.
During her medical examination, Rosheena was diagnosed with several health
issues – STDs, a severe Urinary Tract Infection, other complications because of
constant drug abuse, and dental problems because of prolonged and continuous
consumption of gutkha5
. Her mother discontinues the treatment at her discretion
when she feels her daughter is doing fine. Although health care for survivors like
Rosheena is free of cost, it is never easy for people to leave their work and
earnings to spend hours in a government hospital for free treatment. Private
hospitals are simply beyond comprehension. When asked why she is negligent of
her daughter‟s health, she responds, “theek toh hai. Kabhi kabhi ho jata hai. Yeh
sab toh hota hi hai” (“She is alright. She gets sick only at times, and that‟s quite
normal”). Rosheena opens her mouth to say something but stops. She wants to
undergo proper treatment but her mother somehow seems dissuading.
5
“Gutkha is a powdery, granular, light brownish to white substance. Within moments of chewing mixing with
saliva, the gutkha begins to dissolve and turn deep red in color. It may impart upon its user a "buzz" somewhat
more intense than that of tobacco chewing, snuffing and smoking.” – Wikipedia.

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Rosheena recently visited the district court in Saket, New Delhi, to testify before
the POCSO6
Special Court Judge. Although mentally she had prepared herself and
had mustered courage to testify, to experience it in reality was another story.
Rosheena‟s mother waited anxiously in the waiting room. Her expression was
tense, looking like a mother who is waiting for her child to come out of an
examination hall after a dreaded board exam. The room was busy with toys,
Doraemon playing on the television, parents and their children waiting to testify,
apart from the officials dressed in civil clothes - to maintain a child-friendly
atmosphere7
. After over an hour, Rosheena returned to the waiting room, looking
much older than sixteen, her stated age. Clad in a black burqa, she buried her face
into her mother‟s arm and broke into sobs referring to what she saw on the screen
in the vulnerable witness room where her testimony was recorded - “I saw them on
the T.V.8
they look like they have been eating well and have become so fat. I
couldn‟t bear to look at the faces of those monsters.” In a few moments, she
composed herself and prepared to leave. On her way to the NGO office, where a
counselling session had been scheduled, Rosheena animatedly repeated the threats
the four offenders had yelled at her and the support person from the NGO (inside
the open court amidst court staff and bystanders). She repeated the threats and then
laughed them off. One could not help but notice the forced nature of her carefree
tone.
Rosheena‟s testimony will continue on the next date of hearing and there is still a
long way to go before the court announces the final verdict. There are multiple
charges against the offenders hence the lawyers say it is going to be a long case.
And Rosheena must necessarily wait or give up!
These days Rosheena is busy with summer school classes, being organized by an
NGO near her residence. She attends classes through this NGO and will be
appearing for her board exams privately, once she is ready. She really enjoys her
embroidery lessons and looks forward to her mehndi classes. Rosheena talks about
sudden lapses in her behavior and how she loses her cool at the slightest
provocation. She justifies that at times family can say things in the heat of the
moment which are mean and hurtful. “They should never come out of jail and
that‟s the only way I will feel justice has been delivered.” She says, at times she
feels as if it was all her fault and blames herself for venturing out on that fateful
6
The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012
7
In keeping with the provisions of the POCSO Act 2012
8
Reference to the in-camera trial, where they show the faces of the accused to the child survivor for identification.

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day. When asked if it is better to be confined to one‟s home all the time to avert
these disasters, or if it‟s alright for this to happen to other girls who are outgoing,
she shakes her head and says “nahi” (“No”). Her road to recovering emotionally is
long and possible only with intensive counselling.
When confronted with fearful thoughts, Rosheena consciously tends to divert her
mind. Taking care of her sisters‟ children is one of her favorite ways to do so. She
picks up her eldest sister‟s bawling baby and lulls her to sleep, cooing softly into
her ears “sshh… it‟s alright, it‟s all alright”.

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“I spent all of last night making paper flowers”- Astha, 11.
Astha lives in a one room jhuggi in Tughlaqabad with her parents and her younger
brother. Though claustrophobic for four inhabitants, the room is neat and doubles
as a bedroom cum kitchen. A stove sits on the floor in one corner of the room,
alongside few utensils and jars of ration. A few feet from the floor, a makeshift
shelf holds a few teacups with broken handles, arranged in perfect symmetry.
The otherwise wholesome family of four, grapples with the issue of rehabilitation
post the sexual abuse of their daughter, most of all the mother – Zarina. The case is
listed at the stage of prosecution evidence.
Astha, 9 at the time of the abuse, was led into the jungle nearby, on the pretext that
her dad was calling her. Even though Astha had never seen this man before, she
went with him. He raped her in the jungle and left her there. A few hours later, she
was found by another man who dialed 1009
and took her home. Her parents lodged
an FIR, a case was registered and the family has been fighting the case since 2013.
The case was referred to HAQ: Centre for Child Rights to provide the services of a
support person as required under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences
(POCSO) Act, 2012. While Astha has made considerable amount of improvement
in terms of understanding that what happened was a matter of shame for the
perpetrator and not for her, and is much more confident than before, the process of
psychological rehabilitation is an ongoing one, and she still has a long, long way to
go before she achieves closure.
Closure cannot be attained by just working with the child. At times, the parent(s)
require a lot more attention and counselling. How they perceive and deal with the
issue affects the way they help their child deal with the trauma. The role of the
family, and in the Indian context, the role of the mother10
is pivotal to helping the
child get back on her/his feet post the horrific incident of sexual abuse. The Indian
society can be deeply prejudiced when it comes to understanding the concepts of
honor and shame. Even in the case of grievous assaults like rape, it is the victim
9
100 is the number for the police helpline in India
10
The assumption underlying the statement is that, in the income group we are looking at, the mothers are
primarily home makers while the fathers are bread earners. Hence it is the mother who spends maximum time
with the child.

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who faces social stigma and not the perpetrator. It is as though, the woman or the
girl, just by virtue of her gender, attracted the crime.
Zarina does not blame her daughter for what happened. In fact, she does not even
talk about it, neither does she encourage Astha to talk about it. None of her
extended family members know regarding the incident. She wants to shift from her
current location because she is wary of the prying neighbors. Every time a
counsellor visits, her neighbors want to know who the person is and why she had
come. Zarina fears that nobody is ever going to marry her daughter. She says
tearfully, “What is she going to tell the prospective in-laws about why there are
marks on her stomach? She is a baby now. We are just waiting for the case to get
over. After that none of us will ever speak of the incident again and the matter will
be forgotten”.
Zarina expresses her dislike for times when Astha watches television reality shows
like “Crime Patrol”, and doesn‟t let her change the channel. She chides Astha for
watching “these wrong things”, and Astha‟s response to her mother is “it is not like
these things do not happen.” It comes through quite obviously that Astha watches
these shows because she can relate to the victims in these episodes and projects
herself on to these characters. When asked about it, Astha confirms the hypothesis.
Astha is now eleven. The method Zarina wants to employ – repressing the memory
of the incident, i.e., not talking about it neither allowing the child to speak about it,
may not be the best way to go out.
Astha loves paper quilling and has made a pair of earrings which she is very fond
of. Her brother, who is two years younger to her, wants to throw them away just
for the sake of teasing her. It takes one scream from Zarina for him to scoot off.
For a long time, Zarina had been asking him to “go out and play”, and the child
stubbornly insisted on staying inside. Zarina did not want her son to witness any
conversation regarding the abuse. One could easily guess that he did not have a
direct account of what happened with his sister. His notions may have been formed
by second hand accounts – what he hears from the neighbors and by over-hearing
his parents speak. He knows something is wrong and someone did galat kaam (a
wrongdoing) with his sister, because of which they go to court, but that‟s all. The
parents have decided that they don‟t need to let the son and the younger child know
about the “shameful” thing that happened to his sister. The boy uses his
imagination to string together the fragmented pieces of information he has in order
to understand what his family is going through. As for Astha herself, when asked

P a g e | 17
about the incident, she keeps shooting furtive glances at her mother, afraid of
giving away something, anything. She speaks about the incident only when
prompted by Zarina.
Zarina is fed up with the time the judicial process is taking. She says with tears in
her eyes, “I wish it would just get over soon.” The accused in Astha‟s case is also
the accused in three more cases for the abuse of two other minor girls, who live in
the same area as Astha. Astha‟s testimony is over and now the case is listed at the
stage of prosecution evidence. The fact that no one really knows how long it will
take for the case to wind up amplifies the family‟s misery.
The self-conscious Astha disappears when she starts talking about her hobbies – art
and craft and dancing. She says very confidently that she wants to become a
policewoman when she grows up. The 11 year old is very much there, when she
tattles about her younger brother and how troublesome he is. One realizes not all is
lost. With a little help from the family, and counseling to strengthen the family‟s
coping mechanisms, perhaps the post trauma rehabilitation can be a more
wholesome and holistic one and we can preserve more childhoods.

P a g e | 18
“My rabbit’s name is parrot” – Rosy, 9.
In a dingy jhuggi in the Govindpuri slums, Rosy and her family seem to have spent
eternity waiting for justice to be delivered. The flight of stairs that lead to their
room on the first floor can be traversed only if one has a torch. It is pitch black,
even though it is just noon. The entrance to their jhuggi is covered with rotting
vegetable waste. An open drain flows right in front of the room, and it seems as if
there has been an invasion by flies and other winged insects feasting on the waste.
It‟s been two years since Rosy, now nine, was sexually abused by her neighbour.
She was seven then. He lured her into his room on some pretext and raped her. Her
parents were not at home and her siblings (five of them), didn‟t seem to realize she
had been missing for some time. It was only when her mother got home to find her
bleeding and crying bitterly that she learnt of what had happened. Her parents
rushed to the neighbour‟s room to confront him but he had already fled. They
informed the landlord, who lives in the same building, about the incident and
reported the matter to the police. The ordeal had officially begun.
A frail child, with paleness that made her complexion seem fair, sat on the bed
staring fixedly at her mother, as her mother Afreen spoke about the aftermath of
the abuse. “Rosy was taken severely ill after the abuse. Had she not gotten medical
attention then, I would have surely lost my daughter.” The case is currently listed
at the stage of prosecution evidence.
Rosy‟s father is a daily wage labourer, the work is erratic and he is the sole earner
for the family of seven (his eldest daughter is married and lives with her in laws).
There is food on the table floor, only on the days he manages to get some work. To
make matters worse, the family has been facing constant harassment from the
landlord, post the incident. “Woh bhi toh musalmaan hai” (“He is also a Muslim”),
says Afreen desperately, wondering how one from her own caste could treat her in
this manner. The landlord has given them notice to vacate several times. He
accuses them of having implicated the tenant falsely, who is the accused in the
case, because they wanted money. To add to their misery, he has even stopped
providing them with water, to force them to leave. For a family of seven, he allows
just one jerry can of water. They are now largely dependent on a kind hearted
neighbour who shares water with them. Afreen says, “I don‟t know what I will do
when she leaves. She is such a good soul. The landlord does not spare a single

P a g e | 19
chance to humiliate me or my daughter. The other day the landlord told me, marr
jaane de usse; doosra paida kar legi” (Let her die; you can produce another one).
“Even yesterday she woke up in the middle of the night and started crying. She
keeps telling me that she thinks she will die. She is so scared at times and starts
crying for no reason, and is inconsolable. She tells me she feels that Anand bhaiya
and Nagma Baji11
have abandoned her because they don‟t come to see her
anymore. I console her by telling her that she is such a sweet child that no one can
ever forget her. It‟s just because they are busy that they are not able to visit
frequently anymore”. She keeps asking me, „why did this happen to me?‟ I have
nothing to say to her other than assure her that it‟s all over now.” Afreen adds, “I
know that tenant has performed some black magic upon all of us, which is why my
younger son does not want to go to school these days.”
A rat scurries past her as she shifts to change her posture. Afreen has been
diagnosed with stones in her gall bladder and is in acute pain. She does not have
money for consistent treatment, hence, she has resorted to taking pills when the
pain becomes unbearable. She prods Rosy to talk and asks her why she is
pretending to be so shy. Rosy‟s siblings, all huddled around, giggle. Their pet
rabbit jumps up to the bed and sips water from Rosy‟s glass. Rosy takes a sip from
the same glass before melting into tears. She says, “That man always says bad
things about me. And he says to other people that I did bad things. He insults my
mother and my father also”. The support person from HAQ: Centre for Child
Rights is present and she consoles her by saying, “if he tells anyone about what
happened then the person he is telling it to will know that he is the bad man, you
are not the bad girl. If he is troubling you then I will talk to the police, don‟t worry.
You just concentrate on studying, playing and eating right now. Because that is
what little girls are supposed to do.” Rosy repeats after her, “studying, playing,
eating…”
It is not easy living there anymore and Afreen says she does not even have the
choice of moving out because her husband does not want to. Counselling sessions
for Rosy have been erratic because her mother cannot bring Rosy to the NGO
office due to her health condition, and past experiences have proved that
counselling her at home is futile. “Itni pyaari angrez jaisi bacchi hai meri. Kya
hogaya isse” (My child is such a sweet girl and is so fair like a foreigner. Why did
11
They are the support person from HAQ: Centre for Child Rights, and Rosy’s teacher who is a Teach for India
Fellow. Rosy is emotionally attached to them because they have been with her since the beginning of the case.

P a g e | 20
this happen to my girl?), laments Afreen. Rosy is a shy child and she does not open
up in the presence of her mother or her siblings, neither does the constant
victimization by her mother and family help her.
Is this what it is like to be the victim of one‟s circumstances?

P a g e | 21
“My mother bought me three brand new dresses for Eid!” –
Masoom, 7.
At the Saket District Court, a young woman, twenty three, in a lime green kurta
and blue dupatta desperately tries to put her cranky infant daughter, Tabu, to sleep,
while she simultaneously has a conversation with her lawyer, anxiety and fear
written all over her face. “If he gets bail will he come out of jail? Does that mean
he can go home?” she shoots question after question to the lawyer and the support
person from HAQ: Centre for Child Rights, handling the case. Each question
essentially re-iterates her fear of what “he” will do if he comes out of jail.
The young woman is Maha, mother of three and “he” is Abdullah. Abdullah is in
jail because he raped his step daughter Masoom, Maha‟s daughter from her first
husband. Maha was at the court to attend the hearing on Abdullah‟s bail plea,
which thankfully was denied. Maha has two children (the daughter – Masoom, and
a son – Sarfaraz) by her first husband and a third one, the infant daughter, by
Abdullah. In her twenty three years, Maha has been pregnant eight times and has
had five abortions. She gave birth to Sarfaraz when she was only fifteen. She has
been pregnant by Abdullah six times, who wouldn‟t listen to her when she asked
him to use condoms. He would get her contraceptive pills but they didn‟t work for
Maha. When she went to abort her pregnancy for the sixth time, the doctor said she
would die. That is how her infant daughter, Tabu came into this world.
Her first husband abandoned his family a few years ago. By then, Maha was
already involved in an affair with Abdullah. “Even while I was married, he used to
tell me if I ever marry anyone it would be you”, reminisces Maha. The outcome of
the affair was Maha getting impregnated, after which there seemed to be no other
option for her but to get married to Abdullah. She thought that would be the best
thing to do as her other two children would have a father, and they all would have
a house to live in and food to eat. And so they got married. The four of them lived
in Abdullah‟s chawl.12
One night, when Maha was seven months pregnant with Tabu, she woke up and
found Abdullah making six year old Masoom perform oral sex upon him. Maha
12
A chawl is a large building divided into many separate tenements, offering cheap, basic accommodation to
labourers

P a g e | 22
was furious but at the same time didn‟t know what she could possibly do. Abdullah
on the other hand, melted into tears and apologized persistently that it was a
mistake and it would never happen again. The matter was forgiven and forgotten,
but it did happen again, a month later, in June 2014. The circumstances were the
same as the previous time; Maha had woken up to drink some water, when she
found Abdullah penetrating Masoom digitally. This time she did not keep quiet,
she filed an FIR against Abdullah and took the matter to court. The following
events followed - Abdullah was arrested, Tabu was born and Maha now shares an
apartment with a friend, close to the place where she previously lived. All the three
children are with her. Masoom‟s case is currently listed at the stage of prosecution
evidence.
Maha currently works as a home nurse for a kidney patient in a well to do
household at a posh South Delhi location. She speaks highly of her employer and
says that she is very kind and helpful. Her job requires her to be with the patient
from nine in the morning to eight in the night, all days of the week, barring two
days in a month, which are the only holidays she gets. Her job pays her Rupees
10,000 for a month. Her son, Sarfaraz, is nine, Masoom seven and Tabu eleven
months. “Sarfaraz looks after both of them when I go to work,” she says, “they
stay in the house all day and play. Masoom mostly runs off to play in the
neighbourhood where we used to stay previously.”
Maha‟s current residence is quite spacious as compared to the previous chawl they
lived in. She turns the television off, and switches on the cooler. “It‟s very hot
outside”, she says fanning herself. She repeats the question she had asked at court
the previous day, “Will Abdullah come out if he gets bail? Woh bada hi kameena
kisam ka insaan hai, kuch bhi kar sakta hai”(He is a rascal and can go to any
extent), she says in a frantic manner, adding that he and his friend have threatened
her that they would throw acid on her face the moment Abdullah is out of jail.
They have told her she should fly while she can (referring to her current financial
independence), because when Abdullah gets out he is not going to spare her. Maha
asks desperately, “what was I supposed to do if not get a job? Let my children
starve to death?”
Both Sarfaraz and Masoom go to school. The school is about five kilometers away
and they walk to school daily. A bright and cheerful child, Masoom is extremely
fond of drawing and colouring. Her other favourite thing to do is taking care of her
baby step sister, Tabu. The conversation changes to how her life was in the

P a g e | 23
previous house and which of the two houses she likes better. Not surprisingly, she
answers, “this house”. When asked if she knows why her stepfather is in jail, she
says, “Yes, because he did galat kaam13
with me”. During the course of
investigation, it was found that Abdullah has been abusing Masoom since she was
three and a half years old. It was only when she was six that her mother discovered
what was happening and only when she had seen it happen for the second time did
she take action. When asked why Masoom didn‟t tell her mother the first time it
happened, she said Abdullah had threatened to beat her up if she told her mother.
He used to abuse her when her mother wasn‟t at home, or when they were all
sleeping at night. He would send Sarfaraz out on some errand and make Masoom
perform oral sex upon him, masturbate in front of her and digitally penetrate her.
Masoom states the facts of the matter extremely calmly. She understands what
happened to her, and is clear that it should never happen again.
Masoom‟s mother is now tired of the prolonged judicial process and is anxious to
see the end. Unfortunately, the end is nowhere in sight. Maha recalls the day of the
medical examination and talks about the two finger test which was conducted to
establish whether she had been sexually abused. She says with an expression of
surprise in her voice, “The doctor was wearing gloves and he slid his index and
middle finger into my daughter‟s vagina. It went in so easily and my daughter
didn‟t feel anything at all. She is such a small girl but the fingers went in so easily.
Just like that. And she didn‟t feel even the slightest pain. I understood how many
times Abdullah may have done that to her.” When asked why she didn‟t take the
matter to the police the first time, Maha says, “He said sorry and I believed him.”
She is now concerned about her youngest daughter Tabu and her expenses when
she grows up. She wants Abdullah to pay child maintenance and is going to file
another case for it.
Masoom is asked if she knows Tabu is Abdullah‟s daughter. She nods in response.
“What will you do if he wants to take her back?” she responds, “I will never give
my little sister to him. Let him ask.”
13
Wrongdoing

A labour of love from HAQ CRC, India

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A labour of love from HAQ CRC, India