My name is (Chhaya Kumari). I am 18 years old. I could not study due to the extreme poverty. My parents are completely illiterate. They have been surviving our family working as a manual labor in the brick factory. We are 5 brother and sisters. However, no one has completed school level education.
My house is in Dulwa, Bishnu Rural Municipality-7, Sarlahi District, which is less than half an hour away from the District Headquarters, Malangwa.
I work at home to help my parents. Sometimes I even go to work in Brick factory with my parents. In our society, most of daughters get married at the age of 15-16. I am currently living in a safe house in Janakpur. Certainly, you have wondered why I am here? I have a long story to come here.
There is a non-Dalit community near my house. They discriminate against us in every day and way. They do not accept food and water even touched by us. As much as possible, they do not walk through the road, where Dalits walk.
The incident took place about three months ago. In our village no one have a toilet in their house as almost all Dalits are landless and residing on the government land. They have no own land even to build a toilet. We don’t have a toilet in house. So, you have to go nearby bamboo bush for defecation.
On the night of April 19, 2021, I was with my family. We had dinner and slept. The next morning, it was around 4 AM, I got up and went for defecating near by the bamboo bush, which located to the west of my house. We often go there to defecate. Even that day I was sat down to defecate. At the same time, local non-Dalit Shiva Kumar Raya aged 20 came and grabbed me suddenly. He closed my mouth by his hand. He threatened me and said, “I have been telling you to have a sex with me. But you refused it. I will not leave you today.” He raped me. I could not able to resist him.
After committing the crime, he threatened to kill me including my family members if I tell his crime to others. Forcefully, he put me in a tempo and reached to the Barthwa, a local market. He catches a bus there. About two hours, it reached Jitpur-Simara Sub-metropolitan city of Bara district, where he had rented a room. He lied, “Now I will marry you.” I believed on him.
Even before the incident, Shiva Kumar used to tease me and make love proposals while walking around the village. He was also pressuring me to have sex with him. But I was refusing. I had heard numbers of cases of non-Dalit youths raping and bullying young women from the Dalit community in my village. Not only now, but in the days of our grandmothers as well. But today I had to experience it myself.
He kept me in the rented room in Simara for 20 days and raped me every day. One day he said, ‘Let’s go back home.’ I said, ‘Your family doesn’t accept me as I am a Dalit girl.’ He promised, “My parents agreed to accept you as daughter in law.” I came back along with him to his house. However, his family members denied to accept me. Even they did not allow me to enter their house. They kept me in a Cow shed and held me hostage for about 15 days. They used to give me the food through a hole of the shed. There was Guintha, a fire wood made by Cow dung throughout the Cow shed.
The incident spread widely in the village. Some kept this issue in the social media. Many got information about this incident on social media. But I didn’t know anything about it. I used to sit on a pile of dung.
After knowing about the incident, on the initiative of the local Dalit activities, I was rescued to the safe house at the headquarters of the district. Peace Women’s Service Center, a local NGO in the district supported me to access the safe house. Now, I am seeking justice through legal process.
I have repeatedly lodged a complaint at the police office alleging that Shiva Kumar Raya in the case of false marriage, abducted and held hostage. It has been two months. However, the perpetrator has not been arrested by the police. There are no smart people in my Dalit community. There are people of perpetrators in the all-government institutions of local government.
We don’t even have the money to take legal action. However, I hope that I will get justice. If I don’t get justice, hundreds of my sisters like me have to be raped by non-Dalits. So, I expect your help for the justice process.
Additional information about the incident
In 2011, for the first time, the Government of Nepal made a legal provision to address caste based-discrimination and untouchability. By the end of 2020, about 42 Dalit killed by the high caste people in the name of caste. Thirteen of them died due to inter-caste love affair. However, in only one case the culprit was prosecuted.
In 2020 alone, six youths were massacred in Chaurjahari of Rukum district due to inter-caste love affair. Similarly, Angira Pashi of Rupandehi was killed after an inter-caste marriage. In 2017, Ajit Mijar, aged 20, was killed due to inter-caste love affair in Kavrepalanchok district, a district located just an hour away from the Kathmandu. His family has not yet received justice and his dead body is still in hospital.
In Nepali society, marriage and love between Dalits and non-Dalits are rejected. The civil code of 1853 had declared such marriage as illegal. The law legalized caste based-discrimination and untouchability. According to the law, non-Dalits who did not discriminate against the Dalit community should also be punished. The act prescribed punishment on the basis of caste not on the basis of the crime. Accordingly, the Dalit community should have been punished more than the non-Dalits for the same crime.
The law was amended only 58 years ago in the name of New Civil Code and it made caste based-discrimination and untouchability punishable. However, until 2011 there was no separate provision for punishment on such crime.
Based on a conversation between the survivor and Pachulal Majhi, a member of the Dalit Story Club, Sarlahi
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