“Impunity for Anju Bala’s murder illustrates ongoing dehumanization of the Dalit people,” says human rights group

Sacramento, CA, Aug. 14, 2013 – South Asian Americans half a world away from Himachal Pradesh are championing justice for a young woman from the mountainous northern Indian state who was kidnapped, gang-raped, and lynched almost three months ago. On the eve of India’s Independence Day celebrations, some are disturbed by India’s failure to properly prosecute Anju Bala’s killers, which her family says is due to a lack of police interest because of their social status as so-called “Dalits.”

Anju Bala was living with her family in Binewal, a small Himalayan village, when three men from Singha, a neighboring village, kidnapped her around 8pm at night. Her sister, Kiran, witnessed the incident and immediately notified her family and fellow villagers. By 10:30 that night, the village had issued a search party. Police, who were also notified, sent a clerk to record Kiran’s statement, but offered no assistance in searching for the missing girl.

Early next morning, a bus driver on his regular route came across a horror scene — the body of a young girl hanging from a tree alongside the highway. He reported it to villagers at Binewal, who quickly went there and identified the body as that of Anju Bala.

“What happened next is the tragic reality of India, where discrimination and impunity are the dominant social practices of the nation’s police,” said Bhajan Singh, director of Organization for Minorities of India, a California-based human rights group. “The young girl Anju was gang-raped and lynched by her kidnappers. Police were summoned and the culprits were easily identified, but police refused to arrest anyone until after villagers first threatened to boycott a local election. Even then, the accused were swiftly shuffled from police custody to judicial custody, guaranteeing an end to investigation of their crime.”

Anju Bala’s family reports that four senior police officers arrived to investigate their daughters murder on May 16, including a Station House Officers from Punjab and one from Himachal Pradesh, a Deputy Superintendent of Police, and a Superintendent of Police. Kiran Bala identified Ajay Rana, Onkar Singh, and Kuldeep Singh as her sister’s kidnappers, but police refused to follow-up on her eyewitness testimony. The Bala family stated police showed a “total lack of interest in conducting an investigation because we are Dalits.”

A postmortem was conducted on Anju Bala’s body that day. Before day’s end, she was cremated. Civil Hospital Una, which performed the postmortem, omitted to mention clear evidence of her rape in its report, which favors the acquittal of the accused. After the cremation, police never returned to the village for any further investigation.

Angry at the justice system’s indifference to such a heinous crime, local villagers initiated a campaign to boycott Development Block and District Council elections. When local leaders from Akali Dal and National Congress, the region’s foremost political parties, learned of the boycott and its underlying reasons, they grew frightened at the prospect of non-participation. Meeting with local police officers, they personally pressured them to conduct a more extensive investigation. Only then did police arrest the three suspects.

After the arrest, the villagers conceded to participate in the elections. As soon as the polls closed, however, the accused were transferred from police custody to Hoshiarpur jail. The SHO of Garhshankar, where they had been held, admitted the transfer occurred under political pressure from leadership in the present government.

“The transfer,” said Bhajan Singh, “marked the justice system’s favoritism towards these murderers. Being moving out of police custody means an end to interrogation, a drastic improvement in circumstances, and that these three can now rest easy. The average Indian citizen who is profiled and arbitrarily arrested without probable cause, as happens frequently as a deliberate intimidation of minorities, have no recourse to avoid the harsh conditions of police custody. These three rapists, however, have friends in high places. This is what happens in India when you kill a Dalit.”

OFMI, which speaks against oppression of South Asian minorities, is raising Anju Bala as an icon of Dalit oppression in India. No known English accounts of her murder have been reported to date, yet hers is the common experience of thousands of other Dalits throughout India. According to a 2010 Lenten Study compiled by the World Council of Churches, every week 13 Dalits are murdered, 5 Dalit homes are burned, 6 Dalits are kidnapped, and 21 Dalit women are raped. The International Dalit Solidarity Network reports: “Violence, including sexual assault, is used by dominant castes as a social mechanism for humiliating entire Dalit communities.”

These crimes are usually met with indifference by India’s justice system, which victims attribute to the region’s ancient practice of the caste system, a form of social discrimination dividing people into four increasingly degraded categories on the basis of birth. Dalits, also known as Untouchables, are outcastes treated as sub-human to the rest of society.

“Impunity for Anju Bala’s murder illustrates ongoing dehumanization of the Dalit people,” said Bhajan Singh. “While Dalits are the worst-affected, and stories of Dalit lynchings, rapes, and other such atrocities litter headlines from India, the lowest-caste, called ‘Shudra,’ share in these sufferings. These people are the original inhabitants of India, or ‘Moolnivasi,’ and make up approximately 85% of the population, while remaining the poorest, most poorly treated, and most ignored people group in all of South Asia.”

OFMI states it intends to focus its campaign on persuading US congressional representatives to speak on behalf of the oppressed status of Dalits and the broader Moolnivasi population, as well as seeking the same from the U.S. State Department and U.S. ambassador to India. Furthermore, they encourage concerned members of the public to contact the following Indian public officials to demand answers to questions about impunity for Anju Bala’s murder:

1. Virbhadra Singh (HP Chief Minister) – dprhp@himachalpr.gov.in
2. Ali Raza Rizvi (HP Health and Family Welfare Secretary) – healthsecy-hp@nic.in 
3. Jagdish Bhalla (Chairman, Punjab State Human Rights Commission) – pshrc.chd@gmail.com
4. Gulam Nabi Azad (Union Minister, Health and Family Welfare) – hfm@alpha.nic.in
5. Meira Kumar (Speaker, Lok Sabha) – speakerloksabha@sansad.nic.in
6. Dr. P. L. Punia (Chairman, National Commission for Scheduled Castes) – plpunia@gmail.com
7. Kanwaljit Deol (Director General, National Human Rights Commission of India) dg-nhrc@nic.in
8. Sonia Gandhi (President, Indian National Congress Party) – soniagandhi@sansad.nic.in
9. Sanjay Kishan Kaul (Chief Justice, High Court of Punjab and Haryana) – highcourtchd@indianjudiciary.gov.in