Case in Brief:

Nagamani was working as maid in the house of Durgadas in the year 2004.  Achyuta Rao was working in the hospital of Durgadas.  He used to come to the house of Durgadas to give vegetables every day.  As Nagamani was working in the same place, they got acquainted to each other.  Gradually their acquaintance grew into love.  He promised that he would marry her and developed physical relation.  When Nagamani conceived and informed the same to him, he refused to marry her. 

Meanwhile Nagamani’s parents have come to know about their love and her pregnancy.  Her parents took this issue to the village elders and Durgadas.  They called upon Achyutha Rao and he agreed to marry Nagamani.  They got married in Annavaram Temple on 12^th August 2006 in the presence of their parents and village elders. 

Everything went on well for one and half year.  She gave birth to a girl child.  Later, his family members started pressing him to leave Nagamani and marry his niece.  They influenced his thoughts by asking him to get rid of his wife by hook or crook.  Slowly they started abusing Nagamani in front of him.  He finally decided to leave his wife and daughter. 

In the month of June, he informed his wife that he is going on work and left the home.  He did not return home.  Nagamani tried contacting his cell phone but in vain.  Later she has come to know that his two elder brothers and elder sister are trying to get him married to another woman.  She waited for him to return and finally after 3 months, complained in the Payakaraopeta PS. 

The District Alwar is adjoining the border of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana and village Gwalda is located 125 Kilometers from the District headquarter Alwar, 298 kilometers from Jaipur and 13 kilometers from police station Tapukda. The villagers here live in small Dhanis (hamlet). Anu Bai Meghwal (14 years) d/o Malchand Meghwal studied till 5^th class but due to poor economic condition of their family, she dropped the school.

On 29^th August 08, the day of incident, Anu and her younger sisters were alone at home as their parents went to Lamachpur in condolence of her maternal uncle’s son. As Anu was suffering with high fever, she was resting at home. Her younger sister had gone to school. At around 10 am, Arbina Mave, resident of Gadariya ki Dhani came to Anu’s home and asked her about her health. She told her that she is suffering from fever that’s why she is resting. Arbina insisted Anu to get along with her to the doctor at Tapukda. She forcibly took Anu to her home and there she gave Anu her clothes and asked her to change her clothes as they were dirty. When Anu denied, she slapped Anu and forcibly made her wear those clothes. From there they went to Tapukda in an auto. On reaching Tapukda stand, Arbina made a call to Rinku Gupta who then reached there on a motorcycle. He took both of them on motorcycle to a motel type house on Bhiwadi Road. Rinku took Anu to a room in that motel and Arbina sat outside the room. Meanwhile, a boy named Bhanu also reached there. Bhanu tied Anu’s hands and legs with a cloth and clutched her mouth. Then they both subsequently raped her. After raping, Bhanu stayed there and Rinku again left Anu and Arbina back to the Tapukda stand. Anu was perplexed with extreme pain and fever. Somehow she reached her home. In the evening her parents came back home. But as Anu was not in a position to say anything, was not in her full consciousness, she did not tell anyone. Next day, when she regained her consciousness, she narrated the whole incident to her mother. Then her mother along with other ladies of the village went to Arbina’s home to ask her about the incident, all the ladies of Arbina’s community (Maves) tried to beat them with sticks and shoes. The Mave community people called Panchayat in the village and asked Anu’s family not to register the case. They threatened victim’s family to withdraw the case otherwise they will be killed. Then on 31^st August 2008, victim’s father lodged an FIR against the accused. Even after registering the case, police did not take any action. The victim’s family organized various rallies and sit in strikes just to pressurize police to arrest the culprits. After that police arrested the culprits.

Police registered the case and started the investigation and sent the victim to medical examination but due to political pressures, they did not take any stern legal action against the accused. Statement of the victim was recorded under section 164 of Cr.P.C. Only after various rallies and strikes by the victim’s family, police arrested only one accused. Mave community illegally called caste Panchayat just to pressurize victim’s family not to register the case against them. Maves also threatened them to not to take any legal action against them otherwise they will be killed.

Anu’s medical examination was done on the day of filing FIR i.e. after 3 days of the incident. The medical officer gave his opinion that nothing can be said in regard to occurrence of rape and counted on FSL report. The case is pending in the court. The accused are released on bail. The case is still pending in the court. Due to this incident, victim is still under trauma

Case in Brief:

Lakshmi lost her parents in her childhood.  Her brother Srinivas is working as a labourer in Tadepalligudem.  Rajeshwar was working as TPO in Tadepalligudem and Palakollu in West Godavari district in 2005.  Lakshmi was joined as domestic child labourer in his house.  Later he was transferred to Visakha City Corporation Town Planning to work as TPS.  He took Lakshmi along with his family to work there.  He promised that he would take care of her education and her brother sent her. 

Srinivas and his family lived in Amulya Apartments near Ramakrishna Beach in Visakhapatnam. Just as in the cases of hundreds of domestic child laborers, Lakshmi was never sent for studies and was confined only to the home.  His wife stays in Hyderabad and seldom comes to Visakhapatnam.  Only Rajeshwar Rao and his son Vivek stays in the house.  Rajeshwar Rao started sexually exploiting Lakshmi since November 2007.  He threatened her not to reveal this to anyone.  He never allowed her out of the house.  Consequently, Lakshmi conceived and informed him the same.  He said that he would take care of the matter and asked her to keep quite.  Even then, he did not stop sexually exploiting her and making her to do all the domestic chores. 

One day, when she came out of the house, the watch man Appa Rao noticed her stomach and asked her if she was pregnant.  Rajeshwara Rao seriously warned the watch man not to interfere in his affairs.  On 29^th August, 2008, the Friday morning, Lakshmi started suffering from delivery pains.  He brought a woman with him to assist her in delivery.  The woman was with her till she gave birth to a boy child on Friday morning and went away.  Immediately, Rajeshwar Rao threatened her to dispose away the child, or else, he would kill her. 

In helpless condition, Lakshmi went down and left the child in the bushes behind Kalimatha temple.  As she has delivered just then and was still bleeding, blood dropped on the stair case.  The accused made her wash the stairs from 5^th floor to ground floor to wipe off all the evidences. 

The residents of the colony noticed the child crying and immediately called an ambulance.  The child was taken to Arif Hospital in Dhaba Gardens.  Faja foundation took care of the child.  The residents of Amulya Apartments informed the police that Rajeshwar Rao has made his servant maid clean blood stains on the stairs.  When police investigated into the issue, Lakshmi confessed that it was her child, but did not reveal the name of the accused.  She was joined in King George Hospital for treatment.  Meanwhile, the accused informed her brother that his sister was joined in hospital due to sprain in leg. 

With the persuasion of DSS and other woman organizations, she revealed the whole incident to them on 3^rd September 2008.  But the police instead of registering case on the accused, registered a case on the victim u/s 317 if IPC for abandoning the child.  A complaint was lodged by the victim with the help of DSS on 3^rd September 2008, but the police did not register the case.  DSS with other organizations went for public action.  Next day the incident was reported to the media.  Hence, with the pressure of DSS, media and other organizations, FIR was registered on the accused on 4^th September 2008, u/s 376 of IPC and 3(1)(xii) of SC/ST (PoA) Act. 

The accused denied saying that she has affair with another person called Vijay in Tadepalligudem.  The police also tried to side track the case as builders intervened into the case to help the accused.  The accused has also said the blood stains on the stair case are due to menstrual bleeding and not due to delivery bleeding.  The police did not question anything about the employment of child labour, sexual exploitation, inhuman way of making a girl clean the stair case while bleeding, etc.  They have registered the case with insufficient sections, just as an action to wipe the tears of the victim and the organizations in her support. 

The child of the victim is joined in an orphanage even after the victim said that it is her baby.  The police did not make any attempt to get the mother and the child together though the doctors explicitly said that the child needs feeding from mother as his weight was reducing day by day.  No action was taken on the accused.

Vemagiri Raju and Lakshmi are living in Tapeshwarapuram and were working as laborers in Brick kiln.  They have two daughters.  Elder daughter Nagamani was studying 9^th standard in Mandapeta Government Hostel.  Younger daughter Bhavani was studying 5^th standard in Kapileshwarapuram Social Welfare Hostel.  She joined here in the year 2005.  Prabhavati is working as warden in this hostel.  On 27^th August 2008, at around 12:30 pm, Bhavani went upstairs to dry her clothes and while coming down, she noticed Karri Tatabbai on the stairs.  She asked him to give Rs.2/- to call her parents over phone.  He said that he would give Rs.5/- and asked her to come upstairs.  Believing his words, she went upstairs with him.  He pushed her down and attempted to rape her.  Bhavani started shouting for help.  On hearing her screams, Kranti, 9^th class student, has reached there and immediately Tatabbai left Bhavani and ran away. Bhavani immediately informed the incident to the warden Prabhavati.  Instead of consoling and taking immediate action, she threatened Bhavani not to reveal the incident to anyone.

On 3^rd September 2008, Raju has come to take his daughter Bhavani on the occasion of his elder daughter’s birthday.  Bhavani narrated the incident to her father.  Raju asked Prabhavati about the incident but she denied happening of any such incident in the premises of the hostel and moreover threatened him to leave the premises or she would beat him with foot ware.  Raju immediately approached the police station and informed them about the incident. Karri Tatabbai was arrested and Hostel warden Prabhavati was suspended.