Bhanwari Devi was assaulted in front of her husband Mohan Lal Prajapat in 1992. -AP
Nearly a quarter of a century after the illiterate, low-caste woman was allegedly gang-raped by her high-caste neighbors in the western Indian state of Rajasthan, she refuses to give up her fight for justice.
It was her case that resulted in the Indian Supreme Court formulating guidelines to deal with sexual harassment in the workplace, but her attackers remain free, cleared of rape charges by the trial court while her appeal has been heard just once in the high court over the past 22 years. In the interim, two of the accused have died.
The attack took place on 22 September 1992 and with the passage of so much time, Bhanwari Devi, now 56, no longer remembers the days and dates clearly, but the memory of the assault is still vivid in her mind. "It was dusk. My husband and I were working in our fields when they started beating him up with sticks. There were five of them," she told me when I visited her at home in Bhateri village, 50km (about 30 miles) from the state capital, Jaipur.
She ran to help her husband, pleading with the men to show some mercy, but two of the attackers pinned him down, while the remaining three took turns to rape her. The attackers were Gujjars, the affluent and dominant caste group in the village.
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