It has been 11 years since Mageshwari*, who was allegedly abducted by the police and subjected to torture and gang-rape, had a miscarriage. After surviving it, she ran away to a different town to start a new life.
Mageshwari* (name changed to protect her identity), aged 31, is one of the fourIrular (categorised as Scheduled Tribes)women who were allegedly gang raped by five policemen of the Thirukoilur police station in Tamil Nadu in 2011. The rape case is being heard by the Villupuram SC-ST Special Court, this November.
TKG spoke to the survivors and activists who have been relentlessly fighting for justice.
In November 2011, the Thirukoilur police took nine Irular men, who lived near Thenpennai river bank in Kallakurichi district, under custody, accusing them of theft. They were taken to the police station and allegedly tortured brutally.
Later, a five-member police team, led by the then inspector allegedly barged into the houses of the men, forcibly took four women to the woods, and gang-raped them.
The women, belonging to the same family, were between the age group of 18 to 20 at the time of the alleged assault.
Mageswari told TKG, “When I pleaded with the policemen to leave me, they didn’t relent. This cruelty happened to us right after we saw our husbands and brothers being brutally assaulted. This is our truth, which we have been speaking about, but nobody is believing us.”
Professor Kalyani and PV Ramesh of Tribal Irular Protection of Rights Organisation helped the women seek legal recourse and filed a petition in 2012 in the Madras High Court, seeking a probe by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). They suspected the police would be biased and might not conduct the probe against their peers, fairly. But the court dismissed the petition and ordered a probe by a special officer of the Additional Superintendent of Police rank.
None of the policemen were arrested in connection with the 2011 rape case. It was only after an order on 15 November 2022 from the SC/ST Special Court in Villupuram, that the police inspector was arrested and remanded to judicial custody.
The inspector allegedly absconded for a brief period and his bail pleas were rejected by the lower court. The survivors suspect that the delay in the trial has been benefiting the accused and alleged some documents needed for the trial have gone missing from the case file.