At 21, Bilkis Bano was living quietly as the pregnant, uneducated wife of a Muslim cattle trader. Then a Hindu mob gang-raped her and burnt 13 relatives alive.

Six years on, the frail, softly spoken mother has become a symbol of courage for Muslims and women across India after battling the system to bring her attackers to justice.

A special court in Bombay sentenced 11 Hindu men to life in prison this week for their roles in Ms Banu’s ordeal – one of the most notorious atrocities of the antiMuslim riots that engulfed the western state of Gujarat in 2002.

The court also jailed a policeman for three years for falsifying evidence at the trial, which is seen as a test case for thousands of other victims of the riots – especially those who were raped. It refrained from using the death penalty and acquitted seven others, including five policemen accused of destroying evidence by burying Ms Bano’s relatives with salt to make their bodies decompose faster.

Ms Bano, 27, hailed the judgment as a victory for India’s 148 million Muslims – 14 per cent of the population – and vowed to continue her struggle until the seven other suspects were convicted.

“This judgment does not mean the end of hatred that I know still exists in the hearts and minds of many people . . . but it does mean that somewhere, somehow, justice can prevail,” she told a news conference. “This judgment is a victory not only for me but for all those innocent Muslims who were massacred and all those women whose bodies were violated because, like me, they were Muslims.”

About 2,500 people, mostly Muslims, were burnt, beaten or hacked to death in the violence that began in March 2002 after 59 Hindu activists died when their train caught fire in the town of Godhra.

Hindu groups blamed a Muslim mob for the fire, although an inquiry later found that it was an accident.

The Supreme Court also found that Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist chief minister of Gujarat, was complicit in the violence, comparing him to Nero, who played his lute as Rome burnt.

Ms Bano, who was three months pregnant at the time, was trying to leave her village of Randhikpur to escape the rioting. She and two of her children were the only survivors when 25 to 30 Hindu neighbours attacked her family with swords, sickles and sticks. They burnt 13 of her relatives alive, including her three-year-old daughter, her mother, brother and two sisters, and then gang-raped her. When she recovered, she filed a police complaint against 14 local men, accusing them of rape, murder and rioting. But, as with many other victims, the police first refused to believe her, then tried to get her to withdraw her story and dragged their heels on the investigation.

The 14 men were released on bail and local authorities dropped the case because they had to deal with thousands of cases filed after the riots.

Ms Banu was left without hope until her cause was taken up by social activists who persuaded a Delhi lawyer to take it on and brought it to the attention of the National Human Rights Commission.

In 2004 the Supreme Court ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation – India’s FBI – to reopen the case.

It also moved the trial to the neighbouring state of Maharashtra on the ground that a fair trial was not possible in Gujarat under Mr Modi, who is from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

R. K. Shah, Ms Bano’s lawyer, told The Times that she had grown from a shy, uneducated housewife with little understanding of the world into a confident spokeswoman for the riot victims. “It’s amazing how much she has changed since we first met,” he said. “She is a very courageous woman. This should make all minorities confident that justice can be done in India.” Muslim groups also hailed Ms Bano’s courage.

Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, one of India’s main Muslim political organisations, described the verdict as “a ray of hope to the other victims of Gujarat carnage”.

Ms Bano, who says that she has moved more than 200 times in the past six years and still lives in hiding, thanked all her supporters, especially her husband, Yakub, who she said “stood by me all along”.

She said that she was still too afraid to return to Gujarat, where Mr Modi was reelected last month, or to reveal where she was living now. “The last six years have been terrible. I have had to change homes many times and have had to stay away from Gujarat because the government and police refused to protect me,” she said. “I still fear for my life . . . I want to educate my children and lead a peaceful life.”

The GUJARAT RIOTS

— In February 2002 a train carrying Hindu pilgrims returning from the site of a destroyed mosque in Ayodhya was burnt, killing 59 Hindus, sparking three weeks of violent anti-Muslim reprisals

— An inquiry in 2006 found that the fire was accidental. More than 1,000 died in the riots, most of them Muslims. Many accused the Government of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata party of doing nothing to quell the violence

— By 2004 more than 4,250 cases relating to the riots had been lodged with the police, and only 15 Hindus had been convicted

— In 2006 a retrial sentenced nine Hindus to life for an arson attack on a bakery during the 2002 riots that left 12 Muslims dead. The original trial had resulted in acquittals, amid accusations of witness intimidation. It symbolised the deficiencies in the justice system

Source: Times Archive

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