- Friday, April 19, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
Nearly 30 years ago, she was repeatedly raped allegedly by two brothers. And now, the woman from India is hoping to get justice and guess who is helping her in her quest? Her son who was born out of the assault.
The heart-wrenching incident has happened in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
According to BBC, the woman was raped by two men for more than six months when she was only 12. She gave birth to a boy as a result and the latter, who was given up for adoption then, returned to his mother 13 years later and encouraged her to fight her alleged rapists.
The effort paid off as the police arrested one of the accused around 10 days ago. On Wednesday (10), the other accused was also caught and sent to custody.
“The incident is very old but the wounds it caused have not yet healed,” the woman told the BBC. “It has brought my life to a standstill and I remember that moment again and again.”
India witnesses thousands of cases of sexual abuse of children every year. In 2020, the latest year for which official data is available, 47,000 cases were reported under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act or ‘Pocso’.
But activists fighting the menace say several more cases go unreported as the victims are either too young to understand what is happening to them or are afraid to speak on the trauma. Families also overlook such incidents either because of the stigma or if the culprits are people who are known to them.
The rape survivor whose son is helping her, said she was assaulted by the two men who are brothers in 1994 in Shahjahanpur City in Uttar Pradesh. She said the accused — Mohammed Razi and Naqi Hasan — lived in the neighbourhood and would enter her house whenever she was alone and assault her, the BBC report added.
The woman, then a minor, soon became pregnant and it was discovered after her health started deteriorating. Her sister took her to a doctor who refused to abort the child because of her health conditions and young age. After she gave birth, the baby boy was given up for adoption, the report added.
