Rape victim warns of revenge

Thirty years later, a minor, who was also allegedly gang raped and thrashed by an upper caste BSP MLA and his goons and later tortured by the police, which put her behind bars on trumped-up charges, threatens to become another Phoolan if justice is not done to her.

“If the law does not punish my tormentors, I shall turn a bandit and take revenge,” Sheelu, the 17-year old rape victim. Incidently Sheelu also belongs to “nishad” (boatmen) community from which Phoolan Devi hailed. Sheelu, who was released from the district jail in Banda on Saturday night following a direction from the Allahabad High Court and  UP Chief Minister Mayawati, sought death penalty for BSP  legislator Purushottam Naresh Dwivedi and his associates, who had molested her and later got her arrested on theft charges.

“The culprits should be hanged...I feel like doing it myself,” Sheelu said. “Let them (her tormentors) kill me but I shall not be cowed down…I am ready to fight them until justice is done to me,” she said. “And I will get justice only when the guilty are punished.”
Meanwhile, the minor girl’s tale of horror unfolded on Sunday, when she narrated her ordeal inside the district jail and at the MLA’s house. The girl alleged that the Banda police chief Anil Das had tried to exert pressure on her to withdraw her complaint against the MLA. “The SP spent five hours with me in the jail and kept on asking me to withdraw the complaint but I refused,” she said.

It turned out that she was bleeding profusely and was unable to walk properly when brought to the jail but the officials, instead of providing her medical aid, threw her in a cell. She also alleged that she was beaten by the police in the presence of the MLA’s brother.

A woman guard of the Banda jail has charged senior prison officials with pressurising her to change her statement during her interrogation by the crime branch sleuths.

 She also claimed that the jail authorities did not allow the rape victim to meet her family, relatives and other people, who wanted to meet her in the jail and extend her help.