KURUKSHETRA; Ten days after the gang rape by four peons 12-year-old “Bibi of Kamoda village in Kurukshetra district is still in a state of shock.
It took about 10 minutes for the minor Dalit girl to be able to utter a few words when questioned by media persons on the incident that took place on the night of July 10.
Bibi, who has not gone to school since July 10, with great difficulty Managed (o narrate her harrowing penance, it was around mid- night when a village landlord from. the “Ror’ community (whom she named) gagged her when she was asleep in the county and of her house and took her to nearby fields. Two More persons (identified by her joined the landlord there and all of them raped Bibi.
“Whenever I tried to protest, I ‘was given blows on my face, she sobbed. She soon lost conscious- ness and came to her senses in the hospital after three days.
Forty-year-old Sohan Lal, father of the victim, said the Civil Hospital at Kurokshetra, refused to admit his daughter saying that the case fell under the jurisdiction of Pehowasub-division. The parents and some villagers including the Sarpanchs of the village, took Bibi to the Peliowa police station, where the SHO Ram Chander, got her admitted to the Civil Hospital at Pehowa.
On the statement of Bibi’s mother and SHO arrested the accused immediately. But K.K.Sharma, Superintendent of Police, Kurukshetra, transferred the SHO, a Dalit himself to Ladwa and refused to meet over 100 Dalits from various nearby villages at his office on Monday last.
Dalits from various villages falling in the district held a meeting at Sri Guru Ravi Das Mandir here last week and condemned the incident as well as the transfer of the SHO, The meeting decided that hundreds of Dalits would go to Chandigarh to meet the Chief Minister of Haryana if the accused were not arrested and SHO Ram Chander not transferred back to Pehowa.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 29, 1994
