Rabiya was not an archetype of the ‘damsel-in-distress’, the 21-year old was a civil defense worker.She was reported to have gone missing on 27th August, her family tried looking for her everywhere, and later the news of her barbarous murder traveled home along with her corpse.
After forensic investigations it was discovered that Rabiya was stabbed multiple times at different parts of her body, her breasts were mutilated, her pubic regions were severely injured and the murder weapon, presumably a knife was entered from one side of her jaw and taken out from beside her chin.
As hard as it is to read and write, monstrosities like these are realities for millions of women; how many women will have to receive justice after they meet such gruesome ends?How many Asifas or Nirbhayas or Rabiyas will there have to be to understand the fact that women do not bring rape upon themselves?
Just how many rapists will have to be hanged to death to realize that they are circumstantially normal people with normal lives and a rotten mindset; which almost everyone has in this country regardless of whether they act on it or not?
Further developments,in this case,have unraveled that a man named Nizamuddin has surrendered himself as the killer and rapist, and claims that they both were spouses and he mutilated and raped her during fits of rage after suspecting infidelity on Rabiya’s part; An allegation that the victim’s family has bluntly denied.
Rabiya’s parents have faced non-cooperation and harassment from police forces in Bihar (where the body was found) and in Delhi, with neither of them taking the lead to carry on investigations.
The family asserts that Rabiya was never married and that this is a strategically plotted murder by her entire workforce and two people in particular, about whom Rabiya knew certain dark truths in relation to money laundering, and that Nizamuddin is their puppet who might have played a part in the murder and was made to take the fall.
It would be precarious to jump to any conclusions as of yet but we have witnessed over the years that minority women have become easy targets for revenge crimes just a while ago a minor girl from the Dalit community was raped, murdered, and set on fire by a priest in her locality in Delhi; and just a few days ago a constable in the Aliganj district of Lucknow,Uttar Pradesh was physically assaulted for voicing out against sexual molestation, the accused- a man with colossal ego issues hit her on the head with a rock.
If such is the deplorable condition of policewomen, then what can we make about the lives of women like us? Those who walk unarmed on streets with no formal training in defense, how long till most of us meet the same unfortunate end in an apparent era of ‘#notallmen’?
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