Bulandshahr Gang Rape: A new political narrative is round in the air

NH-91 is a vast, eerily quiet patch of darkness that suddenly lights up into what looks like a tunnel of flickering glow as the driver thrusts his key into the vehicle’s ignition. And this shows how unsafe what villagers have already dubbed “the rape road” is.

It was on this national highway that a bunch of criminals stopped a car coming from Noida that was en route to Shahjahanpur late Friday night last week, raping a 35-year-old woman and her 14-year-old daughter after stripping them of their jewellery and the money they were carrying.

Twenty minutes into the ride and it’s easy to figure out that travellers on this 405 km stretch that connects Ghaziabad to Kanpur would be mere sitting ducks in case someone decided to waylay them at night.

A gang of around a dozen robbers have allegedly raped a woman and her 14-year-old daughter after ambushing their car on the Delhi-Kanpur National Highway on Friday midnight.

The rape survivors and four of their family members were headed to Shahjahanpur from Noida when their car was ambushed near the village of Dostpur.

Police said the women were raped for three hours at gunpoint while other family members were thrashed.

They would be at the mercy of robbers who could rape, kill and maim unsuspecting men, women and children. There is no street light for miles and police pickets are nowhere in sight.

As we tentatively pass through the village, Dostpur in Bulandshahr, that witnessed the horrifying gang rape that drew loud wails of protests from across the nation. The spot close to the fields where the family was dragged to by the miscreants, is echoed with sound only of insects crawling and buzzing in the night.

The highway that cuts through agricultural land was inaugurated 18 months ago with much fanfare by the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi party government in Uttar Pradesh. But, clearly, it will be months, perhaps even years, before it becomes a busy thoroughfare.

Police had launched an investigation into the case and 15 suspects were detained. A nomadic gang from Rajasthan is believed to be behind this crime.

And now it is a political affair

As Uttar Pradesh elections are round the corner, the stage is being prepared for yet another showdown of political strength and supremacy, between various political parties.

The rape incident will be a powerful tool in the hands of opportunistic politicians, who will rake up the issue, to gain mileage in the state. For a few weeks, the victim and her family’s trauma will be eclipsed by which party has met them, and who has promised to do what.

Every single detail of the unwanted, uninvited rendezvous will be highlighted, with the ugly details taking a backseat.

The frenzy of the upcoming competition, will eventually over take the details of the sufferings of two victims and their family. The political bugle will drown out their desperate pleas for justice.

There will eventually come bigger issues to raise a storm about- more cat fights and gimmicks and wars of words. The rape will probably slip the minds of those who are right about now claiming the family’s pain to be ‘our pain’.

They themselves will see this particular incident being reduced to just another number- cold, and solid, very much unlike the damned fates of the victims of the attack, which will forever remain uncertain.

Soon enough Bulandshahr will be just another reason for us to hang our heads in shame for- just like Badaun, Rohtak, Murthal, amongst many others, who have either been wiped out of the public memory or have been just been lost in oblivion simply because they did not take place at a special place and time.
Another number, in the long list of rape cases, to mock the supposed concern of these political cronies, who claim to have felt the pain and sufferings of the victim.

Somewhere in future, on the fringes of our collective mindset, Bulandshahr will ring a faint bell, as the location of a rape that took place just before the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections- the rape that did nothing more than faintly alter the fate of one political party or the other, in the state.