A woman who was gang raped for eight months in Gujarat, western India, is now not only pregnant as a result, but has been ordered to face “purification tests” by her community’s local courts. The BBC’s Ankur Jain reports on what this gruelling ritual will entail and why it is still endured. The shy, softly spoken 23-year-old – who cannot be named for legal reasons – was living happily with her husband and two children in Surat when she was abducted last July and repeatedly gang raped by more than five men over several months.
But the worst was yet to come, when she finally escaped the clutches of her rapists and returned home to her in-laws who disowned her. She was already 24 weeks pregnant by the time she lodged an FIR at the Ranpur police station in Botad district on March 16 and her petition for abortion was turned down by the Gujarat High Court because she was too advanced in her pregnancy.
According to a report in the Indian Express, The court told the victim “to bravely go ahead with the pregnancy and when time comes, deliver the child…”. She is currently residing in Devaliya village, at her parents’ place, with her husband and children. Her husband has left his family, to be with her, after they refused to take her in.
She spends all her time with the children, snuggling them and holding them tight. While her own parents are glad to have her back, they are concerned that the baby she is soon to give birth to will affect the rest of the family.
Victim Faces Chokha Thavani Viddhi or a Purification Ritual:
The horror is not over for her, now she will be forced to go through a ‘Chokha Thavani Viddhi’ or a purification ritual; for the sake of her family. Such a ritual is limited to the villages of Gujarat’s Devipujak community, to which the victim belongs. The Devipujak group follows a strong caste and religious system and has its own community courts which decide on various matters including infidelity and rape.
According to a BBC story, the purification ritual is conducted by a tantric or a priest who practices black magic and believes in supernatural powers.
When the ritual begins, the tantric questions the girl and then checks if she is telling the truth by taking a pinch of barley seeds from a bag and asking her to say whether the number of seeds in his hand are even-numbered or odd.If the girl gets the answer wrong then the tantric assumes her answers have been lies.
This process is then repeated with a 10-kg stone on her head. She has to keep the stone on her head until the tantric is satisfied that she is telling the truth.
“Sometimes it takes months to purify as people lie initially but Goddess knows it all and finally they have to speak the truth,” as elder told the BBC reporter.
Cast Out:
Once the girl is purified and passes the test no-one can point fingers or banish her and her family. But if the girl fails the test and Goddess says she is impure then she might get ostracised from the community. Meanwhile, her husband says that whatever be the result he will not leave her side.
Sardarsinh Mori, a friend of the victim’s family, said such tests were only carried out on women. “Whenever a husband has doubt about his wife, or an unmarried girl is accused of an affair, to purify a woman and free her from the wrongdoings, a purification process is conducted. For men, the community courts conduct tests to check if they are telling lies but no purification is used,” he explained.