P. Sainath

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The High Court
in Jaipur has a pleasant campus. There’s just one element in its garden that
many in Rajasthan find jarring. This is perhaps the only Court complex in the
country that boasts a statue of  &#39;Manu,
the Law Giver&#39; (see cover photo).

There being no evidence that an individual
named Manu ever existed, the statue was shaped by the artist’s imagination. It
proved to be a limited imagination. Manu here fits celluloid stereotypes of a &#39;rishi&#39;.

In legend, a
person of this name authored the Manusmriti.
The smritis are really about norms
that Brahmins sought to impose on society centuries ago. Norms that are
fiercely casteist. There were many smritis,
composed mostly between 200 BC and 1000 AD. They were compiled over a long
period of time by several authors. The best known of these is the Manusmriti, extraordinary for the
differing standards it applies to different castes – for the same crimes.

In this smriti, lower caste lives were worth
little. Take the “penance for the murder of a Sudra.” It is the same as what a
person killing “a frog, a dog, an owl or a crow” would have to perform. At
best, the penance for the murder of  “a
virtuous Sudra” is one-16th that to be made for the slaying of a Brahmin.

Hardly what a system
based on equality before law needs to emulate. The presence in the court of this
symbol of their oppression angers Dalits in Rajasthan. Even more galling, the
architect of the Indian Constitution finds no place inside the complex. A statue of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar stands at the street corner facing the traffic. Manu in his
majesty faces all comers to the court.

Rajasthan has lived up to Manu’s ideals.
On average in this state, a Dalit woman is raped every 60 hours. One Dalit
is murdered a little over every nine days. A Dalit is the victim of grievous
hurt every 65 hours. The house
or property of a Dalit family suffers an arson attack every five days. And each four hours sees
the registration of a complaint falling into &#39;Other IPC&#39; (Indian Penal Code) cases. Which means
cases other than murder, rape, arson or grievous hurt.

The guilty are rarely punished.
Conviction rates range between 2 and 3 per cent. And many offences
committed against Dalits never even reach the courtroom stage.

Countless
complaints end up closed and buried with &#39;FRs&#39; (final reports). Genuine and
serious cases are often scuttled.

“The problem
begins right in the village itself,” says Bhanwari Devi, whose daughter was
raped in a village in Ajmer district. “The villagers hold a caste panchayat.
They pressure the victims to patch up with their attackers. They say: ‘why go
to the police? We’ll solve the problem ourselves’.&quot; 

The solution
usually means the victim gives in to the oppressor. Bhanwari was held back from
going to the police.

In any case, the
very act of a Dalit or Adivasi entering a police station brings its own risks.
What happens when they do go? In Kumher village in Bharatpur district, some 20 voices answered at the same time: “Two hundred and twenty rupees entry fee,”
they said. “And many times that sum if you want them to move on your complaint.”

Where an upper
caste person has attacked a Dalit, the police try to dissuade the victim from
filing a complaint. “They’ll ask us,” said Hari Ram, “Kya? Baap bete ko nahin marte hain, kya? Bhai bhai ko nahin marte hain
kya? (Doesn’t a father strike his son? Doesn’t a brother hit his brother
now and then?). So why not forget it and drop the charge’?”

“There’s another
problem,” says Ram Khiladi, laughing. “The police take money from the other side
as well. If they pay more, that’s the end for us. Our people are poorer and
can’t afford it.”  So you can actually
pay Rs. 2,000 to Rs. 5,000 and lose it. 

Next, the
policeman coming down to investigate can end up arresting the complainant. This
is more likely to happen if the latter is a Dalit complaining against an upper
caste person. Often the constable belongs to the dominant caste group.

“Once when the
upper castes attacked me, the DIG posted a policeman outside my door,” says
Bhanwari in Ajmer. “That havaldar spent all his time boozing and eating in the
Yadav houses. He even advised them on ways of dealing with me. Another time, my
husband was beaten up badly. I went to the station alone. They wouldn’t file an
FIR and abused me: ‘How dare you come here on your own, you a woman (and a Dalit
at that)?’  They were outraged.”

Back in Kumher,
Chunni Lal Jatav sums it up: “All
the judges of the Supreme Court do not have the power of a single police
constable.”

That constable,
he says, “makes or breaks us. The judges can’t re-write the laws and have to
listen to arguments from learned lawyers of both sides.  A havaldar here simply makes his own laws. He
can do almost anything.”

If, after much
effort, an FIR is actually lodged, fresh problems arise. That’s apart from the
“entry fee” and other moneys paid. The police delay recording witnesses’
statements. And, says Bhanwari, “They also deliberately fail to arrest some of
the accused.” These are just declared ‘absconders’. The police then plead
inability to proceed without their capture.

In many
villages, we came across instances of 
“absconders” actually moving about quite freely. This, and the inertia in
getting witnesses’ statements, leads to fatal delays.

It also leaves
the Dalits at the mercy of their attackers in the village, often forcing them
to compromise their own case. In Naksoda in Dholpur district, the upper castes
inflicted a unique torture on Rameshwar Jatav. They pierced his nose and put a
ring of two threads of jute, a metre long and 2 mm thick, through his nostrils.
Then they paraded him around the village, leading him by the ring.

Despite the
media attention the case got, all witnesses– including Rameshwar’s father,
Mangi Lal –  have turned hostile. And yes, the victim himself has absolved
those charged with the crime. 

The reason?  “We have to live in this village,” says Mangi
Lal. “Who will protect us? We are dying of fear.”

“Any atrocity
case,” senior advocate Banwar Bagri, himself a Dalit, told me at the court in
Jaipur, “has to be processed very quickly. If delayed beyond six months, there
is hardly any chance of conviction. The witnesses can be terrorised in the
village. They turn hostile.”  

There is no
witness protection programme. Besides, delays mean that already biased evidence
gets further rigged as the upper caste group in the village strikes a deal with
local police.

If the case does
get off the ground, there’s the problem of lawyers. “All vakils are dangerous,”
says Chunni Lal Jatav. “You could end up with someone who bargains with your
enemy. If he gets paid off, you’re finished.”

And costs are a
real problem. “There is a legal aid scheme, but it’s too complex,” says advocate
Chetan Bairwa, among the few Dalits at the High Court in Jaipur. “The forms
need details like your yearly income. For many Dalits on daily and seasonal
wages, this is confusing. Also, awareness of their rights being low, many don’t
even know about the aid fund.”

That Dalits are
poorly represented in the legal fraternity does not help. At the court in
Jaipur, there are about 1,200 advocates, of whom about eight are Dalits. In
Udaipur, that’s nine out of some 450. And in Ganganagar, six out of 435. At
higher levels, under-representation is worse. There are no Scheduled Caste judges at the
High Court.

There are Dalit
judicial officers or munsiffs in Rajasthan, but these, says Chunni Lal in
Kumher, don’t matter. “They are too few and they don’t even want to be noticed,
let alone draw attention to themselves.”

When a case
reaches the court, there is the peshkar [court clerk] to take care of. “If he isn’t paid off,
you can have hell with your dates,” I was told in several places. And anyway,
“the whole system is so feudal,” says Chunni Lal. “That’s why the peshkar, too,
has to have his cut. In several
magistrates’ offices, all the judicial officers sit and have lunch that is paid
for by the peshkar. I recently exposed this to journalists who wrote about it.&quot;

And lastly,
there’s the abysmally low conviction rate itself. But that isn’t all.

“You can have a
good judgement,” says Prem Krishna, senior advocate at the High Court in
Jaipur. “And then find that the attitude of the implementing authorities is
terrible.” Prem Krishna is also president of the Peoples Union for Civil
Liberties, Rajasthan. “In the case of the Scheduled Castes there is both
economic inability plus a lack of political organisation. Even Dalit sarpanchas
are trapped in a legal system they can’t fathom.”

In Raholi, Tonk
district, suspended sarpanch Anju Phulwaria, having spent tens of thousands of
rupees fighting her case, faces financial ruin. “We’ve taken our girls out of a
good private school and put them in the government school.” The very school where teachers were
responsible for instigating students to deface Dalit properties. 

In Naksoda,
Mangi Lal has spent over Rs. 30, 000 fighting the nose-piercing case – one
on which he and his son, the victim, have given up. The family has
sold a third of its meagre land to meet the costs. 

Rajasthan’s new chief minister, Ashok Gehlot, appears keen to change some of this. He says his
government is willing to consider a random survey of &#39;FRs&#39; –  final reports or closed cases.
If deliberate cover-ups are found, “then
those guilty of undermining the investigation will be punished,” he told me in
Jaipur. Gehlot intends to bring in
“amendments to the panchayat laws to ensure that weaker sections are not
wrongfully deposed” from posts like sarpanch.  

Quite a few
sarpanchas like Anju Phulwaria were, in fact, victimised during the Bharatiya Janata Party regime.
By reversing that process, Gehlot can only gain politically. But he has a huge,
hard task ahead. The system’s credibility has never been lower.

“We have not the
slightest faith in the legal or judicial process,” says Ram Khiladi. “We know
the law is for the big people.”

This is, after all, Rajasthan, where
Manu casts a long shadow inside the court. And where Ambedkar is an
outsider. The crime data in this two-part story for the period 1991-96 were from the report of National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for Rajasthan of 1998. Many of these numbers might actually have worsened since then. This two-part story was originally published in The Hindu on July 11, 1999. It won the first Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism, in the prize&#39;s inaugural year, 2000.

A Dalit goes to court – 2

دلتوں کا عدالت پر بھروسہ نہیں رہا – ۲

ఒక దళితుడు న్యాయస్థానానికి వెళ్ళినప్పుడు - 2

ഒരു ദളിതൻ കോടതിയെ സമീപിക്കുമ്പോൾ - രണ്ടാം ഭാഗം

ஒரு தலித் நீதிமன்றம் செல்கிறார் – 2

'ದಲಿತನೊಬ್ಬ ನ್ಯಾಯಾಲಯಕ್ಕೆ ಹೋದಾಗ - 2'

এক দলিতের আদালত যাত্রা – ২

ଜଣେ ଦଳିତ ଯେତେବେଳେ କୋର୍ଟକୁ ଯାଏ - ୨

এজন দলিত যেতিয়া আদালতলৈ যায় - 2

दलिताने चढली कोर्टाची पायरी - २

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A Dalit goes to court – 2

Data shows that Rajasthan is not the best place to live in if you’re a Dalit. But what happens when a Dalit seeks justice? What are the perils and pitfalls, the long and often futile processes that he or she must face?

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