We know her name, the 19-year-old Dalit woman who was raped and brutalised by four Thakur men in Hathras. She died on September 29 and was ...
We know her name, the 19-year-old Dalit woman who was raped and brutalised by four Thakur men in Hathras. She died on September 29 and was buried by the Uttar Pradesh police even as her family pleaded that they be allowed to take her body home.
According to law, women who have been raped are to remain anonymous and any information identifying them be withheld from the public. That is unless the woman herself agrees to reveal her identity. In cases where the woman is dead, her next of kin may agree to make it public but the permission has to be routed through a welfare organisation recognised by the Centre or the relevant state government.
In this case, the woman named her alleged attackers before she died – Sandip, Ramu, Lavkush and Ravi – upper-caste Thakur men. After her death, people marched to demand justice in her name, that of a Dalit and a woman.
Courts have reasoned that the names of women who have gone through sexual violence must not be revealed to avoid causing them shame. But the shame is not hers. Instead, her name is an indictment of the social and state institutions that surrounded her in life and in...
