Irony

Thakurdas, 76, is bedridden, weighs just around 35kg and was jailed because a girl accused him of rape. Surprised? Well, there is no need to be. With around 14,000 rape cases being filed in Uttar Pradesh every year, it was just a matter of time before a rape mafia emerged.

They are an elaborate network of middlemen, fake witnesses and corrupt cops who are after compensation. If the ‘victim’ belongs to a Scheduled Caste or Tribe, she gets an immediate compensation of Rs 75,000 from the government.

Three months after he was jailed, Thakurdas said: “You see my physical condition; does it allow me to rape anyone? The police and the girl’s relatives have implicated me. The girl [Namita] was keen to marry my son and they had jointly filed papers in the Allahabad High Court in this regard. But under pressure from her parents, she accused me and my sons of rape.”

Namita’s brother Bhagwat Saran alleged that Thakurdas and his two sons, Hari Om and Harish Kumar, kidnapped her in January 2009. The police traced her in Allahabad and reunited her with her family. The complaint said Hari Om took her to Gorakhpur and Allahabad, where she was confined and raped. But a probe revealed that Namita had eloped with Hari Om, and that she alleged rape on her family’s insistence.
Said a senior jail official: “In all probability, Thakurdas has become a prey to the rape racket, as he could not cough up the money demanded by the complainant and the police.”

Lawyer Ashwini Agnihotri, who has fought over 200 ‘rape racket’ cases, said: “In rural areas, 90 per cent of rape cases are fake and they are lodged either to settle scores with an opponent or to get compensation. In many cases it is both—revenge and a windfall!” In Pilibhit district, on an average, 200 rape cases are lodged every year and around 180 turn out to be fake. It has a pattern, too—most victims are SC/ST and the accused come from a specific caste.

Interestingly, most cases are like Namita’s. The girl elopes, is found and brought back and then screams rape under pressure from her family. The family then hires a tout who specialises in framing rape cases. The tout takes over from there and files a fake case, arranges for paid witnesses and bribes the police. On most occasions, the accused buckles under pressure and pays up. The case is then settled outside court.
“Once a complaint comes to the police, they try to extort money from the accused depending on his capability to pay. A case can be settled for Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh; 50 per cent goes to the police and the remaining is shared between the complainant and me,” said a tout.

Even a tiff between lovers can end in a rape charge. On June 14, Sajeevan, 22, of Hariyya village, accused Arvind Yadav of raping her. The police arrested Yadav and jailed him. But sources in the village told that Sajeevan and Yadav had been seeing each other for quite some time. Apparently, Sajeevan’s brother had worked with Yadav on a few small projects. The problem, reportedly, started with Sajeevan becoming pregnant and an argument between the lovers ended in her running off to the police with a rape charge. In this case, the DGP personally delivered the compensation to Sajeevan.
Rape cases can go on for a long time. In July 2000, Latika Devi complained in Pilibhit court that she was “raped at gunpoint by Jaitu, son of Vijay Kurmi”. Latika said she was on her way to the fields to deliver lunch to her brother-in-law, when Jaitu raped her. On May 19, 2009, the court released Jaitu as it did not find any evidence against him. That is eight years for a crime not done!