Forty days have gone past since 11 tribal women of Vakapalli village in Andhra Pradesh were allegedly raped by policemen of the elite anti-Naxal Greyhounds.
Yet nothing has been done to bring the culprits to book. The government has turned a deaf ear to their cries for justice; the political parties have ignored their plight after initial pronouncements of outrage. For the media, it is no longer a story, while the women’s and other civil society organizations have been lukewarm in their follow up.
This collective apathy of society to the trauma of the 11 women, all married and having children, has forced them to go on an indefinite strike from September 22 at Paderu, the mandal headquarters, about 100 kms from here.
This after 17 days of relay hunger strike organised by the Adivasi United Struggle Committee, from September 3 evoked no response from the government.
Protest
A total bundh was observed in the agency areas of Visakhapatnam district followed by dharnas, rasta rokos and public meetings organised in several towns of the Andhra region.
The 11 haggard and starving women and two men, Korra Someshwara Rao, secretary of the Primitive Tribal Groups Network and S V Ramana, President of the G Madugula Mandal under which Vakapalli comes, are waiting in hope that their protest would yield some result.
Ten days have gone by. With their infant children by their side, the women wait for the wheels of justice to turn. To no avail. As yet. Not a single political party has responded to the hunger strike. Not a single minister, not the Collector nor the Superintendent of Police of the district has visited the hunger strike camp.
“This government is for criminals, not victims. What kind of government is this?” asked Lake Raja Rao, the tribal MLA of Paderu. He is the lone BSP MLA in the entire South India.
Mr Raja Rao told Deccan Herald at the hunger strike camp that the 11 women’s travails seemed to arouse neither anger nor concern of the society at large. Nor have any of the commissions like the national and state women's commissions, human rights commissions, SC and ST commissions responded in a concrete manner to the atrocity committed on the Vakapalli women.
“The rape of a woman in a Mumbai train becomes a national issue but what about us? If we were not tribals certainly the entire system including the media would have camped here,” Mr Raja Rao said.
“The only way out is for all of us to take up weapons and join the Maoists. What else can we do when our self esteem is destroyed?” he asked. A woman activist responded to him with a solution.
There was only one way of making the government sit up and listen to them. “We should take on the state, set buses on fire, go to jail and die if necessary.” Is this message loud enough to reach the government?
