As 10 days have passed since the gruesome murder after rape on last April 28 of a dalit student Jishamol who lived with her mother in a one room shanty house built on 2 cents wasteland in Vattolippara of Perumbavoor under the jurisdiction of Kuruppampady Police Station , reports coming in clearly indicate that concerted efforts were made on the part of the police and a section of residents in the neighbourhood to hide the real nature of the crime .The police were trying to mislead the public by portraying the murder as though it was caused under totally mysterious circumstances or by accident.
Going through many recent reports on crimes in the state, one can easily find out that whereas incidents involving sexual offences against women are alarmingly on the rise on the one side, practice of discrimination against poor and particularly social oppression against dalits is getting institutionalized to an alarming extent, on the other.
There were as many as thirty wounds inflicted on the body of Jisha, according to the report of post mortem, which again was done not under the supervision of a police surgeon but by a medico undergoing PG course in Allepy Medical College . Further, there were also indications that after the rape followed by murder even the dead body had been violated in worst manner. In spite of all these, the police were reportedly not just in a hurry to dispense with the body by giving it back to the relatives of Jisha but they also gave an NOC to the Municipal authority for taking the body for cremation. Why did the police act with such haste if it were not for destroying crucial evidences like forensic evidence and all?
In the case of Jisha, there seem to be factors common with what we find in earlier cases of rape and murder as well. Much like in Saumya rape and murder (in Kerala) and that in Jyoti Singh (Nirbhaya) case, the ugly face of patriarchal attitude to all women, reducing them to inferior creatures never to be allowed to have any will or choice of one’s own, has been unabashedly on display in Jisha’s murder as well. The unspeakably violence and horrendous nature of the rape and murder in question is sought to be kept as selectively hidden from, and partly open to the public view. In combination with the hegemonic structure of caste, it is employed with a purpose, often to show one’s ‘real place’ and to ‘teach lessons’ to a non-compliant woman or dalit. Perhaps this explains the whole thing as to why most spokespersons of right wing –caste-gender structures rather approvingly keep silence or raise totally inopportune and ridiculous questions of dress, morals and modesty even in the context of gruesome rapes and killings.
Another set of actors who deliberately tried to mislead people to the assumption that this murder is mysterious and entirely clueless are sections in the mass media who routinely take instructions from the police and publish stories accordingly, on a day to day basis. One such report in a prominent Malayalam daily that appeared on the very next day Jisha was murdered had the caption meaning ‘Young Woman’s Body Found Dead Outside Home and under Mysterious Circumstances “
However, later it was known that Jisha’s body was seen murdered not outside, but inside the house. Further, It took few more days to be known that police had actually received complaints on at least two earlier instances from Rajeswari, mother of Jisha that certain persons were persistently harassing her daughter and threatening them both. Now, it is anybody’s guess how such complaints by a poor dalit woman staying in a shanty house on a piece of wasteland would have been treated by the police .
While crimes against women and dalits go toward the path of near institutionalization thanks to a callous administration on the one side, people’s democratic expressions of dissent and protests are steadily gathering momentum on the other. Any democratically elected government should have the minimum courtesy to try to understand the real message and purport of these protests. CPI(ML) Liberation Kerala State Committee has said in a statement that rather than trying to suppress the truth about most heinous rape and murder of a dalit woman, and suppressing democratic expression of people’s dissent, the UDF government should immediately take action against the erring police officers and replace them with designated Special Investigation Team comprising officers with exemplary track record.
Further, the government should take most urgent steps to rehabilitate Jisha’s surviving mother who, with the loss of her only daughter, is totally broken and bereft of all material and emotional support.
