She is 24, has passed her high school and now wants to be a judge so that she can make sure that rape survivors do not have to wait so long for justice.
She is 24, has passed her high school and now wants to be a judge so that she can make sure that rape survivors do not have to wait so long for justice.
“If I become a judge, I will make sure that rape victims are not insulted in court and justice is done without delay. It took me 11 years to get the main accused behind bars,” she said.
The young woman, who was gangraped by six men in a moving car and burnt with cigarette stubs at the age of 13, said she “felt relieved but only partially,” when the main accused Gaurav Shukla was awarded a ten-year sentence for the crime on Monday.
Her case is now known as the Ashiana rape case, named after the locality where her nightmare began on the night of May 2, 2005. The 13-year-old was returning home from work when the car stopped and she was pulled in. Later in the night, she was dumped on the roadside, bleeding profusely.
“I do not understand why he was given only ten years’ imprisonment when Faizan, a co-accused, has already been given a life term. The car in which the crime took place belonged to Gaurav and he has also been found guilty of forging documents to prove that he was a juvenile at the time of the crime. The sentence came after 11 years and he got merely ten years in jail. I will appeal for a harsher punishment in the higher court,” she told this correspondent.
The young woman, who did her high school through an open school, is aware that becoming a judge is a distant dream. “But I will chase my dream and fulfil it one day. I do not want others to go through what I went through. More than 60 times I was asked to explain all the details of the rape in court and it felt like I was being raped each time. I was kept in a women’s home for several months even though I was the victim, while the accused roamed free. My father, who is a scrap seller, and my family, were repeatedly threatened by the accused,” she said.
She is also determined to continue her legal battle and ensure “proper punishment” for the accused that are politically well connected.
“We may be small people, poor people but when it comes to fighting against them, I will never give up. They have destroyed my life and my childhood and I will make sure that their lives also get destroyed-that is when I will get justice,” she said.
The feisty young woman now wants to visit Ajmer Sharief and offer prayers at the dargah.
