A 12-year-old girl who hails from a far-flung village of Uttar Pradesh (UP) is raped by two men. The sexual assault and her agony continues for almost two years until she gets pregnant and delivers a boy. Her family abandons the son, thinking it would give her a normal life, which never happens. The past continues to haunt her for 30 years, affecting her family and married life, until, in an exceptional turn of events, her 30-year-old-abandoned-son traces her and motivates her to file a First Information Report (FIR) and find the wrongdoers. With the son’s DNA sample as evidence, the court finds them guilty, and sentences the two to 10 years rigorous imprisonment.
This may sound like a script of a Hindi film, but it is the story of a woman (name withheld as she is a rape survivor) from Uttar Pradesh’s Hardoi district. The woman and her son spoke to News18 about their decades-long struggle and extraordinary journey for justice.
ARRIVAL IN SHAHJAHANPUR
One of the five siblings in a poor family in a remote village in Hardoi district, the woman was sent to her elder sister’s house in Shahjahanpur to pursue her studies, as her father, an agricultural laborer, was finding it hard to meet the family expenses.
“I arrived in Shahjahanpur in 1993. I happily joined the new school, excited with my new bag, water bottle and cycle that my sister bought for me. However, this colony was different from ours in Hardoi. It was a secluded area in a Muslim-dominated locality, where a group of uncultured people frequently teased girls passing by with lewd remarks. Initially, I ignored it, but the teasing (now under molestation category in law) intensified with each passing day. Eventually, I told my sister that I didn’t want to continue school. Concerned, my brother-in-law and she enquired with the school authorities, who assured them that everything was fine. The comment often repeated was, “Mohalle mein ek chidiya aai hai.” At first, I didn’t understand what they meant, but later I realised they were referring to me, making me feel uncomfortable and unsafe,” she told News18.
SITUATION WORSENED
With her silence, she said, the situation only worsened, as the unruly boys started following her to her house, and there were times when she had to hide to escape. But they gradually discovered her address. The survivor recounted how they used to stand outside her house for hours.
It didn’t take them long to assess that she stayed home alone in the afternoon as her brother-in-law, who works in the forest department, was often out on duty, and her sister worked as a school teacher. This emboldened them and made her feel even more vulnerable.
THE FIRST ASSAULT
“One day, things took an ugly turn as two of them barged into our house, scaling up the wall. When I opened the door, they pushed me in, groped me and assaulted me. I couldn’t understand what was happening. They left the house, threatening to kill my sister and her husband if I spoke up. I remained tight-lipped, thinking it was a bad dream, but never realised that it was a reality that was going to haunt me throughout my life,” she said.
THE PREGNANCY
Soon, the two men turned up again, making it a routine affair. “I wanted to tell my sister and mother, but I couldn’t find the words to explain my situation until the day I fell seriously ill. My sister took me to a doctor, who confirmed my pregnancy. Still unaware of what it meant, I didn’t understand the family’s panic or why I was being thrashed. Fearing for my sister and her husband, I stayed silent, but eventually gave in and told everything to my mother,” she added.
The woman said her brother-in-law and sister traced the two men and even went to their house, but one of them threatened to kill them if they approached the police. “That night my sister vacated the house and we left for another city. As my pregnancy was beyond the point of termination, I was made to deliver a baby, but I never got to see him. As I gained consciousness, my mother told me to remain tight-lipped. She said if I uttered a word about the incident or asked about the baby, the entire family would die by suicide. I was just 12 and did as I was told. I was brought back to my village in Hardoi,” she said.
‘OSTRACISED BY VILLAGERS’
The woman said she had hoped that her life would be back to normal in her village. “I was wrong. On seeing the changes to my body after the pregnancy and delivery, the villagers easily put the story together. They started ostracising me. They boycotted my family after which we were forced to leave our ancestral village. I was dumped at my relative’s house, where I was treated like house help,” she added.
However, she got a brief break from all her miseries in 2000, when she got married and settled in Varanasi. “I was leading a happy married life. I gave birth to a boy. Somehow, one day my in-laws came to know about my past and my husband asked me to leave and take my son along,” she said.
On the other hand, her sister, too, paid the price for supporting the survivor, as her husband left her.
THE RETURN OF THE ABANDONED SON
In 2007, the woman moved to Lucknow with her son, determined to start afresh. She began living in a hostel and took on private jobs. Despite her efforts to rebuild, challenges continued to emerge, testing her resilience and strength. “One day, a young boy approached me. I was shaken to the core as he told me that he was the son my family had abandoned. I didn’t know how this boy had managed to trace me or what he might have faced in life. He had so many questions, but I couldn’t answer even one,” she said.
‘THEY SHOULD PAY FOR THEIR DEEDS’
The woman and her two sons started to live together and she even took up a petty job, however, the elder son’s questions remained unanswered. “Over the years, I tried to avoid them, but in 2019, he threatened to end his life if I didn’t tell him the name of his father. I broke down and told him everything. Instead of going weak, to my surprise, he boosted my morale and promised that we would trace the culprits and ensure that the wrongdoers paid for their deeds. His strength and determination gave me the courage to seek justice after all these years,” she said.
THE HUNT
The son recalled the time when the three used to earn money through petty jobs to bear the transportation expenses and leave for the scene of crime (Shajahanpur). “Whenever we managed to collect some money, we used to visit Shahjahanpur in search of the two rapists. However, with no clues except the name, Razi Bhai, his eyes and his croaky voice, tracing them was not easy. We sought help from the local police station, but the police told us they couldn’t assist us as we didn’t know the names or whereabouts. It was incredibly challenging and frustrating,” said her eldest son.
WHEN RAZI BHAI CALLED
“We used to visit the colony and distribute our numbers at shops and in markets, telling them that we were Razi Bhai’s relatives from Dubai and we wanted to meet him for some important work,” he said.
The search went on for two years, after which the woman’s phone rang one day. On the other side was Razi Bhai. “It was a flashback moment for my mother, but she controlled her emotions, spoke calmly and soon handed over the phone number to the police, who remained lackadaisical,” he added.
Muthar Khan, the lawyer who represented the woman at the Sessions Court in Shahjahanpur, said after a lot of reluctance, police filed the FIR against the two, who happened to be brothers, on March 4, 2021.
In August 2022, the UP Police arrested Mohammad Razi alias Guddu Hasan. The other accused, Naqi Hassan, was later arrested from Hyderabad.
THE TRIAL
Khan said during the trial, the defence relied on the lack of witnesses, passage of time and inability of the police to locate the doctor who facilitated the delivery. They argued that as she had kept this secret for so long, “the physical relationship” between the accused and her “was established on the basis of mutual consent. This argument aimed to undermine her credibility and dismiss the severity of the crime committed against her. However, her son and she stood firm as rocks,” said Khan.
SON SOUGHT DNA TEST
Her son, the only evidence of crime, sought a DNA test of the two accused to be matched with his to which the court agreed. On the court’s order, the DNA samples were collected and were sent to a lab, and the results, which were obtained in April 2022, turned out to be positive. “The results concluded that one Razi was his biological father,” said Khan.
THE SENTENCING
On May 20, 2024, the Shahjahanpur Sessions Court sentenced Mohammad Razi and Hassan Naqi to 10 years rigorous imprisonment for raping the woman for two years between 1994 and 1996, when she was just 12. The court also slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 each.
Shahjahanpur superintendent of police (SP) Ashok Kumar Meena told News18 that the court convicted the duo under IPC Section 376 for rape and sentenced them in the matter. “The two convicts who were aged 25 and 22 when they committed the crime are now 55 and 52, while the survivor is now 42 and her son, who was born out of the rape, is now 30,” he added.
The woman said that although she doesn’t have much faith in God after such a long suffering, if she ever had the chance, she would certainly ask him why her sons and she were made to suffer for someone else’s wrongdoings.
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