By Revathi Siva Kumar
Poster image courtesy: Image courtesy: Sara Tunich Koinch/ Hri Institute for Southasian Research and Exchange https://hrisouthasian.org/changing-visual-narratives-stock-images-photographs/
On May 28, 2024, the Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) organised an online panel discussion on 33-year-old former MP and serial abuser Prajwal Revanna, examining how power shields (alleged) sexual abusers in politics.
The panel comprised
- Anisha Sheth (Associate Editor of The News Minute),
- Meeran Chadha Borwankar (IPS, retd)
- Poorna Ravishankar (Lawyer and activist) and
- Vrinda Grover (Advocate, Supreme Court of India).
The discussion was moderated by Laxmi Murthy, Journalist and Researcher.
Introduction:
On May 28, 2024, the panel discussed serial sexual abuse charges on 33-year-old former JD (S) MP, Prajwal Revanna, in the disturbed district of Hassan (Karnataka), his constituency. Though he faced accusations of having molested several women, he had only three official sexual abuse cases on him. His mother had sought anticipatory bail on an alleged kidnapping case. At the time Revanna, who was not in India, was expected to travel from Munich and land in Karnataka by the end of May and undergo a probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT).
Introduced by the moderator, Laxmi Murthy (Journalist and Researcher), the panel examined the manner in which powerful politicians are shielded by the law as well as the police.
Anisha Sheth (Associate Editor of The News Minute), who covered the case in Hassan for The News Minute, outlined the challenges in identifying and reporting the issue. She said that in Karnataka, they had “gotten together and written to the women’s commission,” which took it up quite fast”, so that it was clear that they had “some kind of leg to stand on and report the case”. Anisha recalled that at that point of time the name of the 33-year-old former MP, Prajwal Revanna, was doing the rounds in his constituency of Hassan, “but they could not go to town with it, as there was a gag order.” Although a number of videos were floating around, they could not really identify the nature of those recordings. “Finding the right term for it was a challenge, as it took time to figure out what was happening and also figure out how to describe it,” she said.
There were rumours about the acts being “consensual”, mainly because the politicians involved were powerful and “the context under which those videos were shot” could not be identified. The videos were unclear about the circumstances, yet it was an important part of the report, as the “videos could hide as much as they could reveal, and perhaps even more”. Hence, it was an important part of their reportage to understand that the accused was a powerful man and the investigation as well as the circumstances in which it occurred could only be brought out by the SIT and the police.
In the small town of Hassan, with just a few lakhs population, everybody knew almost everybody. As one activist put it, “if there was one wedding, half the town turns up.” The people could figure out on the ground what was happening and who the women were, as they were getting the videos every day. “But reaching out to the women under extreme pressure – some even suicidal – was hard and they even had to decide whether or not to reach out.” Journalists had to be careful communicating with them and could do so only when someone came forward to file complaints. So Anisha said that they did try to get in touch with the women, though ones who did not want to talk could not be forced to. Journalists needed to take a call on such issues and also focus on the damage it did in the small town where everyone knew the other yet “nobody quite has the language to speak about it”. It is either extremely harmful or hurtful language. For instance, one woman said that she was getting a number of calls, and one even asked “Oh, are you alive?” in a tone of surprise that suggested that she should have harmed herself in some capacity!
So some conversations on the one hand are about people who have watched the videos and known about the issue, “but are really, really hurtful and harsh”. On the other hand, “many young people had zero knowledge about any kind of sexual activity but have watched the videos and do not know how to handle it.”
Reporters felt that they should focus on these issues in some depth and capture what it had done to the small town. It was all about “the powerful third generation politician, who practically runs the JD (Secular), which initially started out with good intentions, but now pretty much exists only to promote one particular family and its members!”
The moderator then switched to Meeran Chadha Borwankar (IPS, retd), recalling that she had “led the investigation into the Jalgaon sex abuse case, largely called the sex scandal, which itself is very problematic, as it takes away from the real nature of the violence”.
Laxmi asked whether, after 30 years of investigation in 1994, anything has changed. Secondly, what are the loopholes in the forensic investigation or in any other aspect of it? As everyone seems to be involved and it concerns the rape and abuse of almost 400 to 500 women, what are the problems and challenges?
Meeran said that in the Jalgaon sex scandal, a similar high number of women reported their cases. Initially, nobody came forward, but then 12 complained, and six got convicted out of those 12 rape cases registered. A special court was constituted for trial, and though six got convicted in the session court, they ended up getting acquitted in the high court. “That was mainly because the benefit of doubt was given to the accused, as the registration of cases was very late. The earliest case registered was six months after the rape. In this case too, I can see the same issue being taken up by the defence lawyers and it would bother the judicial officers also – the delay in registration,” she said.
They also investigated two other urban cases in Parbhani and Malegaon. “In both cases, we got conviction, because reporting and registration was immediately after rape. Hence, what I found was that immediate registration leads to better chances of conviction, as proved by these two cases that we investigated simultaneously, along with Jalgaon cases. Each case must be a separate FIR. For conviction, each case has to be filed separately.”
She added that “In the Jalgaun cases, the blow after late registration was the medical report, which stated ‘habituated to sex’. “After the amendments following the Delhi rape case, doctors have been advised and warned not to give these opinions or go in for finger tests, but I’m told that on the field even today doctors are doing the finger tests and giving certificates, which can be harmful for prosecution.”
She reviewed her points: “Hence, delayed registration, medical certificates, conviction at the sessions trial stage but acquittal at the High Court stage – mainly because of the delay and secondly because of the medical certificates.” At that time “they too were unable to register many cases, just as it was likely to happen in Hassan.”
She rued: “You might read in the media that 100 women have been sexually exploited, yet I doubt whether many will come forward to complain. We even got suicide threats. I clearly remember a Jalgaun girl writing that she has been exploited. She said she married and in case we reach out to her, she would commit suicide. So the threat is quite high, I can foresee that.”
Therefore, she could foresee that “the collection of evidence in these cases would be very tough and the victims contradict themselves so much, because this is not a case where sexual exploitation happens on Tuesday or Wednesday and the girl goes to report it on Thursday.”
“The exact date, time and collection of evidence puts up a lot of challenges for the investigating officer. What helped them was the special prosecutor.” She pointed out that even Karnataka would need to have the best of prosecutors to help the investigating officers, but not only at the stage of trial. “Handholding even at the stage of investigation in such sensitive and delayed reporting of cases is essential. Not only would the victims be contradicting themselves, but would also give a strong alibi to the accused. I was wondering whether the two lawyers can suggest that somehow we consider these victims to be in custody of the accused and whether that can bring the burden of proof on the man, rather than on us.”
Vrinda Grover explained that she would wait for their opinion and charge-sheeting at the earliest. A court must be constituted. “Just now, before our programme started, I was quite distressed that Raheem’s case of murder, from 2002, has been acquitted now. Yesterday, we also spoke about Salman Khan’s road rage case, leading to loss of life, but getting acquitted in 2015, while the registration was in 2002. Hence, in case a special court is not constituted and the trial is not started expeditiously, we will be facing acquittal.”
So it is clear that the registration of individual cases, the collection of evidence and the recording of statements by the victims before magistrates is crucial. She referred to cases in which the victims “went hostile and contradicted themselves and did not support their own complaints in the courts.” So the recording of statements of crucial witnesses before magistrates would go a long way in getting successful prosecution, timely charge-sheets, special courts, immediate trial and recording of statements currently under 164 CRPC.
She concluded with another point that she mentioned she would also like Vrinda to address: “The presentation of videos as a technically sound evidence, which would also be strongly contested by defence lawyers.”
Vrinda Grover (Advocate, Supreme Court of India) took the issue forward from what she heard regarding the challenges in reporting well as investigating. Some of the issues that were raised included the framework within which this kind of sexual exploitation was located. “One of the languages in law that we can use is sexual exploitation, which is also a term that has resonance in the Prevention of Atrocities Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes Act,” she said.
She recalled that “in 1983 and in 2013, when amendments were made to the Rape Law in particular, one of the issues on which there was a lot of emphasis emerging from the experience of women’s movements and groups across the country, was on the category of the power relation or the coercive circumstances, under which rape is committed.”
Hence, in 1983, Section 376, Subsection 2 was added to the Indian Penal Code, “so that there was a notion of custodial rape – the classification of coercive circumstances, in which consent would become immaterial and there can be a presumption.” She rephrased it to indicate that “Consent would not become immaterial but the absence of consent would be presumed and a rebuttable presumption would be raised against the accused.” Further, that category, or listing of circumstances, was further detailed and the list was expanded in 2013.
She added that she does not have the details of this particular case, but assumes that some of the provisions have been invoked, which is that when there is a relative, guardian or teacher or a person in position of trust or authority. From the news clips she has read, she assumes that there are some persons who are relatives of the accused who are in positions of trust vis-à-vis domestic help or other staff, would be 376 to Sub-section F.
But going back to the whole issue of the FIR, she said that a lot of burden is being placed on the women victims. There would have to be multiple FIRs, each one of them telling their own narration of what was done.
She pointed out that “The law is very clear that if there is information that a cognisable offence has been committed, then an FIR can be registered by anyone. It’s not a burden on the woman to go forward. Of course, she would have to give a statement and if that has to move forward and the investigation has to have any lease of life, then her involvement would be necessary. But she doesn’t have to trigger the investigation, is what I’m trying to say here.”
Addressing the other question of delay, she agreed that it is something the Supreme Court and other courts have dealt with repeatedly in many cases. The delay has been condoned in many cases, but similarly, in many cases, the delay has not been. Hence, she said that the principle of law is very clear: “If there is a satisfactory and reasonable explanation for the delay, it would be condoned. But it depends on what will be considered satisfactory and reasonable – fear, loss of jobs, social humiliation or disgrace are all very good reasons for women to remain silent.”
Looking at the takeaways from this, she said: “Even as all of us, particularly women in Karnataka, try and combat this mass of sexual exploitation, the lid on which has been blown off now, I think we should also see this as an opportunity to develop an understanding on what it is and how erroneous it would be for evidence to be appreciated for the courts to assess the principles laid down through the lens of individual cases. There are multiple axis on which the power differentials would have to be assessed.”
Vrinda looked at it as an opportunity to educate the court, ourselves and the general public on how to measure delay and comprehend the reasons for it. She recalled that decades ago, Professor Lotika Sarkar explained that “law looks at everything through the lens of the reasonable man.” While the delay in reporting by a reasonable woman is extremely comprehensible, “the principle of criminal jurisprudence would have to hold a gendered lens to comprehend this.”
Moving on to talk about the evidence, she asserted that clearly there would be no medical evidence. While no one knows the period of time that these kinds of sexual assault have taken place, it clearly wasn’t in the last 48 hours! Many of those women are married and many have had children – it involves a very large group even in terms of age. “Therefore, to imagine that this is a case that is going to yield some kind of medical evidence as corroborative evidence and the law on this has again been repeatedly laid down that the woman’s sole testimony is sufficient, provided it is credible, consistent and inspires confidence and medical evidence is at best corroborative, of course. But there can be no medical evidence. Therefore, perhaps subjecting women to internal exams is only going to be more distressing and humiliating for them.”
Regarding contradiction and inconsistency, Vrinda agreed that there should be no variance in what she says. “We would have to educate courts in understanding how long ago it happened and what is the trauma that is going to inform her testimony, whatever be her evidence or statement given to the magistrate or if and when she does appear to court.” There would still be a huge gap in understanding trauma and in forming testimony in our country. It does give us an opportunity to educate people about the legal system and the entire criminal justice system.
She referred to videos as a very important issue, as there is a special provision of the Indian Evidence Act, which has been interpreted by many judgements of the Supreme Court. “There is a lot of technical compliance in order to ensure that the evidence is not tampered with or doctored,” she said.
Vrinda added that “We can completely see Revanna’s lawyers going ballistic about such things and we will soon be hearing this in the media, as he is shortly to return and begin the circus again.” The fact is that such videos are on his phone and on his device. “The Information Technology Act makes capturing videos of this kind as well as transmitting them an offence.” Hence, as the police is thinking along these lines, as to how to frame these provisions, Vrinda speculated that if a number of women have faced sexual assault, they can file individual FIRs, but also stand witness to each other.
Vrinda said: “Both can be witnesses for each other – not an eyewitness but a witness with whom she has shared or who is in the know about what has happened If they can support each other, that would be a very important way of taking and giving confidence, courage and solidarity, which women can show towards each other. Whether it’s the Me Too movement or anything else we know, we derive courage from each other, so it’s hard to battle this alone.”
There is also a provision in the Indian Penal Code that she drew attention to. Section 376 C says that sexual intercourse by a person in authority, or in a fiduciary relationship, or in public service like Prajwal Revanna is abusive of his position, trying to induce or seduce a woman in his custody or under his charge or in the premises to have sexual intercourse not amounting to rape. He could then be punished with rigorous imprisonment for not less than five years, making it to 10 years. “This is not rape, I know, so I’m not trying to be provocative here. I’m only saying that if the defence is taken well and if it looks like I’m forcing her, she goes home, but on the next day she comes on her own. Where is the absence of will or consent?”
Vrinda concluded with the example of the Suryanelli case, “in which the high court thought that a 16-year-old was consenting to having intercourse with I can’t even remember how many men. So I’m only saying that we need to ensure that there are other provisions of law which don’t amount to the maximum, but still entail that a punishment can work in certain circumstances.”
The final panellist, Poorna Ravishankar (Lawyer and activist), made two broad points. One was the public perception of the women. She said that on the question of consent, “We feel more often than not that just as people understand what is consent, the gravity of it and that it is not black and white, in this particular case, time and again from all ends, in fact including from state agencies, these women have been questioned in various ways.”
For example, Kumara Swami said that one of the women who was allegedly in the video was seen sitting beside Revanna, campaigning for him. Then, you had no less than the National Commission of Women, which said that there were false complaints being filed. In addition, the role the Kannada media was also important. “It requires time to shape a certain kind of public perception around the case about how women went on their own accord,” said Poorna.
You found this being discussed relentlessly in the streets in Hassen, with people who repeated that “You need two to Tango, you need two hands to clap for something like this to happen”. They were really pushing it from all ends and none of this was actually being challenged by the government. The stoic silence of the government had actually enabled these kind of narratives. In fact, The News Minute was also reporting how these videos were being sold on social media and how the government really hadn’t come out to challenge and stop it!
Recently, there was a meeting, where there was a discussion on what civil society should do in the days forward, to address instances of sexual abuse and assaults, where women seemed to get categorised. The first case that came out was of a woman who said that she worked in the Gowda family’s house for so long. She said “I’ve served your grandfather, so please leave me alone.” That testimony became extremely vibrant. “In that meeting, people were saying that women like that are the real victims, but the younger women seen in the videos were not victims.”
People seemingly on our side were not clear about what is consent or how it could be gotten under coercion. In more ways than one they came back to the age-old patriarchy and victim shaming the women in public, but the case also spoke about the magnitude of the problem that lay in front of us. “We are not just fighting a Prajwal Revanna or one family or political party. We are fighting people who are seemingly on our side but seemed to have got it all messed up.”
The other thing was that all of this added up and the SIT was really struggling to get women to come and complain. “They were exploring various other channels, where people could go and speak to the survivors, calm them down, give them reassurance and then then bring them in to complain. So these are not things that are happening somewhere in a void. It is having a direct impact on what the women are feeling, what they choose to do or not.”
Secondly, Poorna highlighted a few issues related to the bail order of the father, HD Revanna, who was arrested by the SIT. “The woman had alleged that she was kidnapped, her family didn’t know about her whereabouts. But eventually, she was forced to record a video saying that she was absolutely fine, nobody was forcing her to do anything and that she was in a safe place!”
A bare reading of the bail order showed that an FIR had been filed under Sections 364a and 365 of the IPC. Section 364a speaks about kidnapping somebody, causing harm or death to them or threatening to cause harm or death in order to get a ransom. Section 365 indicates kidnapping somebody with the intention of wrongful confinement and harm. In the bail order, it seemed clear that the court dismissed charges against the senior Revanna under Section 364a, pointing out that the ingredients are not attracted. Court does not go into discussing Section 365 at all.
Poorna explained that there was a lapse on both sides. The FIR was filed before the SIT was formed, so it was most probably the local police that filed it. “We do not know if the woman had any support when she went to file it. But clearly, 364a is not attracted so that was a lapse that could have been avoided and bail could have been made harder if the right sections had been invoked,” she said. “The court goes to great length to explain why Section 364a is not applicable in this scenario, but it just lets you know that Section 365 slips by. They do not discuss whether the father Revanna actually acted to illegally confine the woman.”
“These are very technical but basic things, which we feel are going to make or break this case. When this bail order came out, some of us had a real fear that even if Prajwal Revanna were to come back and if these are the kinds of FIRs that are going to be filed where sections that don’t apply are going to be invoked, then that makes it easier for the court to let the person get away. Those are going to be the real challenges for the investigation,” she summarised.
She added: “There is also a little bit of anxiety in the fact that the state government has been changing the prosecutors at crucial stages. In the case of course there’s absolutely no doubt that the people who are being appointed are competent lawyers, who we can trust with the investigation and with the prosecution, except that we don’t know what the government is thinking. So far, we’ve not heard anything from the chief minister or the home minister. These are all things that we should have already gotten the act in place by this time, but we are still scrambling around. I think the women are going to pay the price for this.”
Question-Answer session:
To start off the Q&A session, Laxmi Murthy asked Miran a question that had come in earlier, on whether it makes a difference to have a woman police officer heading these teams. Does it make a difference to have women more closely involved with the whole process of even collecting the evidence and making it towards the FIR? What has been the experience from the Jalgaon case in the past 30 years?
Miran said that her clear opinion was that the team leader may be of any gender, maybe man or woman, but the team must consist of women officers. She explained with a specific example from the Jalgaon case, where girls as expected were not coming forward to give their complaints and it was Mr Arvind Inamdar, head of the team, who said that Miran should go outside the city and live in a place where women didn’t feel threatened and could feel secure enough to walk up to her and give their complaints.
Miran narrated: “I was staying in an officer’s mess in the police headquarters with a small child, but I resented that I had to take my child to a place that was literally an old, dilapidated building in the fields. But it was a very gender-sensitive and very good tactic from a male officer. It was a female officer who in fact was not very comfortable going outside and staying with a small child.’
The experience made Miran realise that “the team leader may be of any gender. But yes, when it came to getting the girls to me and making them talk, the Maharashtra police would send me women officers from Nasik, Pune and from as far as Nagpur and Mumbai. Now Karnataka, I think, has about 12% women officers, so they must be part of the team.”
The moderator asked another question to Miran involving cases in which high-ranking politicians were involved. There have been questions about the timing of the release of the videos, why it was released on certain dates, after the polling date, who knew about it and when was it … these were all questions that also applied to many of these larger issues, because most of the cases went on for months and years before coming to light. She asked to what extent does the political class impact policing.
Miran replied that there was no doubt that politicians interfere a lot, in promotions and postings. But in this particular case, she said she saw challenges everywhere and as Vrinda said, the need was to come out of the black and white situation. “If you are sexually exploited, you report it immediately, so that it addresses a particular question and the threat. My apprehension is that many of the victims are not going to support prosecution, dreading that there might not be acceptance and admissibility of videos, how they were recorded, when, are they genuine or doctored – in all these I see a lot of challenges from the legal point of view. I don’t think politicians will interfere much now. If Karnataka is serious, they can have a man or a woman of integrity heading the SIT, with a big chunk of women officers and staff there.”
A listener, Vina Shatrugna said that “We should think of a class action and a special prosecution task force to be appointed and paid for by the government. Getting every victim to go through the experience any number of times during the trial would be traumatic. The Bhopal gas tragedy was an example. It did not do justice to all, but it set a precedent. A new precedence must be attempted without traumatising the women any further. This would go in quite a different direction, from almost every comment or appeal that each FIR had to be distinct. But I was insisting that the magistrate should let the victim give her statement before the magistrate once and then you should investigate around that. Don’t call her again and again.”
The next question asked to Miran was about having mental health professionals for better understanding of trauma and the contradictions that emerged as women shared their testimonies. “I will add one more to it – delay. I mean, why do women delay?”, asked the moderator.
Miran agreed that the women, who were married with children, got totally traumatised and were made to feel guilty and shamed. “So definitely, beside the legal recourse, we need mental health care workers and some support system,” she said. “We could not try Jalgaon cases in Jalgaon but tried them in Pune, because we felt that victims were being pressurised. In fact, regarding two victims, we came to know that their marriages were fixed by the accused and therefore, they did not support prosecution. Hence, the women in Pune came forward and hosted these victims for months.” The girls were not mental health workers but concerned citizens, who felt that injustice had been done while hosting these girls. They did their best to help them without shaming them or making them feel guilty.
Two more questions that came up were: “Did politicians interfere with court proceedings in the Jalgaun case? How did the accused get acquitted and how can we ensure that this does not happen in the Revanna case?”
Miran answered that they got convicted by the sessions court but acquitted by the High Court. “The benefit of doubt was that registration was late. The issue is very alive in this case also that women are reporting and registering their cases late and the medical certificate mentioned habitual to sex, which is going to be an issue here also. So both these issues I feel made the high court give them the benefit of doubt.”
She also responded that “politicians did not interfere at the trial stage but the accused themselves were politicians with money, so they bought the victims, their families and organised some compromises, including having the girls married.”
A question was asked by Kalpana Sharma, mentioning that she had read a report in The Hindu, on how the whole issue has been diverted to the question of who released the tapes and the political narrative about whether it was the BJP or somebody else. The political conspiracy behind the issue, what can be done about it and the responsibility of the media became an important issue. Secondly, was there any other way in which this could be brought into focus?
Miran answered that she was more bothered about the custody of the video and how it was presented in the court, accepted and admitted as a piece of evidence. “It is important to be able to prove in the court that it’s a genuine video recorded at X time, which was in the custody of Y and is being produced as per the legal framework. The rest of it is political and all from the investigators’ point of view,” she replied.
One listener asked about the direction to the civil society and activists. “All the students who are involved in this are experiencing a collective angst. But then right now, the right to protest is almost like waiting for the elections to be over and we have a gag order also that we are not supposed to be involved in any kind of protest now. In such cases what can the civil society, the students’ or women’s organisations do? This case should not lose its steam and at the same time it is an opportunity for us to change the law about the consent and the coercion.” Hence, she suggested that an action plan or some kind of direction should be spread across, to keep the narrative fresh and in favour of the women.
Vrinda responded, beginning with a couple of things that was said prior to this. “When we talked about mental health professionals … I think a lot depends on the state and how much support civil society can give will determine whether these women will come forward or not. … So yes, they need counselling and support, but I actually think it doesn’t have to be done in the way we think of mental health – one-to-one counselling. We need to do this, as it is what feminist women’s groups can do.”
How do you talk to society, to their community and how do you engage with issues of shame and stigma? “It’s actually not just that woman who has to think. It’s a family, a neighbourhood and a community. One has seen this particularly when there have been caste atrocities, sectarian and communal violence – the kind of conflict in which you really need to engage with the community. Women are not dealing with this as individuals… India likes to think it’s doing everything better than the world, then we need to think about how to bring this into the community. If the government of Karnataka is willing to open its resources, one should tap into it.”
Her second comment addressed the ‘how, if and when’ of filing charges. “I don’t like placing any burden on whether they can or can’t. If the state gives confidence, they will come forward and may change their minds later. It is very hard to go through this, but there is a judgement that was passed on January 2022 by the Supreme Court. Smriti Tukaram Badade vs the state of Maharashtra, in which the Chief Justice of India’s judgment mandated that in every district there will be a vulnerable witness deposition centre. I’m told that the trial is being shifted out of Hassan. But the women may not like to be shifted out of Bangalore to depose. Each woman is going to be located and her circumstances will be different and individually assessed. But every district is required by law now to have a VWDC (Vulnerable Witness Deposition Centre) for a woman in a rape trial to depose through this electronically, where of course she will not be confronted with the accused, but doesn’t even have to be physically present.”
“Secondly, to get confidence, the family has to think what is at stake in going out and giving evidence against the most powerful family in that area. Civil liberties people have always opposed it, but sometimes one needs to use things from the arsenal of the state, which frequently externs activists from districts through court or administrative orders,” she said. She asked why shouldn’t the powerful people not be externed from that area for some time? “Otherwise, how else can these families even have the space to think whether they want to depose. Where is that confidence and courage going to come from, unless there are signals that the state is serious about going after Prajwal.” It’s not part of some binary politics that are being played out, she said.
Similarly, compensation would again be a signal from the state that it recognised and acknowledged the harm and injury done to the women. “A compensation has to be given here, at least an interim compensation, which at least in Delhi is within the control of the legal services authority.”
Vrinda said: “There is a judgment of the Supreme Court in the Muhammad Harun case, where I represented seven gang rape victims of Muzzafarnagar in communal violence. The court gave them compensation when they said they had been gang raped without any trial even having begun or any charge-sheet having been filed. So these are ways in which the state should be compelled to at least place before the women that there is some reason for them to feel that they can come forward.”
To another question on how to keep the issue alive and prevent it from dying, she said that it is a huge responsibility to keep the issue alive without dying out. “The Bilkis case succeeded because people did not leave her side and that’s very important to remember.”
The moderator said that Prajwal Revanna’s coming back was important. “Where is he, what is he doing? You know this whole video which he released – how do we keep the focus on the crimes he committed, because a lot of reporting was just on the video without a comment, that he is so isolated and depressed and so on. It’s really like shaping the narrative. How can we push the media to change that?”
Anisha answered that when they reported the story, they highlighted the crimes that Revanna has been accused of. “But he did not mention even once the videos that he’s been accused of filming.” She said it is one of the ways in which we can keep the focus not to erase the context, basically, of what has been happening. One of the ways in which we keep the focus on the crime is to talk about who the accused is.
Answering another question by Kalpana Sharma on finding out who released the videos is a relevant question, because these videos have wrecked their lives. Anisha said that “It is a double-edged sword, given how powerful this person is. They may have been sexually exploited and it has come to light, but at what cost? Whatever it is, these women cannot go out in public, so the stress and the pressure on them is really high and one of the things that bothers these women the most, according to activists on the ground is how do they face their children? Nobody can give an answer.” She said that they do not know if their children have watched these videos and they are not emotionally or intellectually equipped to deal with these videos, because it’s not always evident.
“In some of the videos, you can hear some of these women begging and pleading, but not in all of them. So the point that these videos will be mistaken for consensual activity is there, which is also how a large section, or at least a substantial section of the people are interpreting them. It is not just young people but also adults who know these women.”
Many of the women were JDS party workers, so the videos made all the women and their friends, who are like extended families, suspect. It was not just these women, but their friends too who came under the radar, with statements such as ‘She’s friends with that woman, so you know her videos will probably come out another day.’ It was equally disturbing to see the people who took the videos and the crimes alleged against the women. The filming of these acts and their leaking was one aspect of it, but there was also another disturbing aspect: people actively sought for these videos like regular people. It could be somebody down the street, that is neighbours, friends and everybody who asked for and watched them. They knew what it was and still went ahead and saw them. The morbid kind of curiosity definitely existed, which the people of Hassan were struggling to deal with, because they didn’t know what to do about it!
Anisha agreed that while we needed to focus on asking who leaked these videos, we should frame it in the context of the crime that has been committed by those directly involved. Secondly, the crimes of leaking or sharing or these videos was also important. Some of the questions that people raised included why the information couldn’t have been given to the courts, the police or the relevant authorities? Leaking it to the public caused damage. Everyone is aware of the law. Moreover, these were political parties and two people who were arrested by the police were aides of a former BJP MLA. So you cannot dismiss this question of who released the videos entirely, yet it should not be framed in the context of the blame game that politicians were playing. For them, their political careers and one-upmanship was important.
However, journalists, civil society members or perhaps activists should focus on the crime by persistently asking both questions: who released the videos and where is this man? In order to keep up the pressure on the government to find the man and bring him back, it was important to keep asking these questions and keep the pressure up.
Secondly, Anisha referred to an open letter released by the civil society coalition to these women and also to society in general, stressing that there should be focus on the fact that “you cannot assume consent, regardless of what might appear in the videos and what you personally think – you cannot assume consent because we live in a patriarchal society, where you know the dice is already loaded against women. You need to remember that this man is a politically powerful man and therefore we should not respond by thinking in terms of consent but we should think about it in terms of the power that is loaded against these women. The fact is that these women have been victimised, perhaps originally you know coerced into sexual acts. Also, when these videos were released and leaked they were just made open for the whole damn world to see.”
Anisha said that the Karnataka civil society has made the point. “The way in which they’ve been mobilising around this issue is quite remarkable. There are meetings every day like practically in every district, where 105 people turn up. They are printing posters and pamphlets and releasing them.”
On the culpability of people who watched and shared the videos and the media using footage from the videos without blurring the faces, Anisha said that she with her colleagues, Shivani and Aditi, did a story on the media coverage, “which was spectacularly bad. You have them using unblurred visuals of these women. They are playing it almost like pornography. You can see a woman on loop, disrobing and undressing and so on, is terrible to watch.” She said she did ask the head of the Women’s Commission on whether they would take action and she said yes, she has written to the police … And that was the end of it!
One viewer asked what tangible actions can lay persons and civilians take? There are a number of problems with the FIRs and the kind of sections that are probably going to be blown apart by the defence lawyers. So what are the other ways to approach justice?
Poorna answered that in terms of the civil society, she could think of three things. One of them was the letter, which had already been spoken about, where women’s groups and civil society played an important role, because something was being said that the system was not telling the women. “It’s not their fault. The SIT of course did put out a very good letter at the beginning of the investigation, encouraging women to file complaints… Making sure that the message goes across to women, promising that we will stand with you if you complain and we will be there with you to see you through,” needs to be ensured.
Secondly, it is important to keep the issue alive. “We’ve had a protest in Bengaluru and discussions about it in different forums. And then of course Hassan too is happening. But this will not be enough. There was also a small event in Dharwad another district in Karnataka, so we really need to keep the pressure on and keep talking about it. “As Vrinda mentioned, it should be like Bilkis’ case, when the convicts were released, a group in Mumbai had actually done a signature campaign hitting the streets, to talk about what had happened to her, and ask if people knew etc. We replicated that effort here in Bangalore and to our shock most of them didn’t know who was Bilkis! They didn’t know what had happened to her and they had absolutely no clue that the convicts were released. So, in such a scenario it will be important to keep talking about the nitty gritties to the public.”
The third issue is media coverage. She recalled that they pushed the Women’s Commission to have a meeting with all media houses in the state, bringing to their attention the NBSA (News Broadcasting Standards Authority) guidelines and how you’re supposed to report on cases of sexual assault.
The moderator commented that the key point everyone’s making is that the interest in the case2 needs to be sustained. Otherwise, these cases can be very long drawn out, as the Jalgaon cases, which just went on and on. “It’s only after 10 or 12 years that there’s a conviction, then an appeal and then an acquittal and one has to stay with it.”
Vrinda responded to a question on the delay involved, suggesting that there is a point in which civil society, journalists and lawyers can come together. “When we are talking about what is consent, it doesn’t have to be what informs the mind of the court. It is how we develop an argument, a narrative and a discourse in understanding what it means for a woman to consent. We have seen that shift in the law. But the shift cannot happen only because people sitting in the courtroom suddenly get enlightened! The enlightenment would only happen if we shine the torch from outside. I mean, I would love it to happen everywhere in the country but at least it should happen in Karnataka, with both Kannada and in English columns which talk about what is consent, what does it mean to give consent to a man who determines your social, economic and political life and can actually have you eliminated, your land taken and do whatever he wants. What does it mean to say no to such a person?”
She added: “We really have to help society and the court understand consent. Unless the gun is on her head and unless she’s been killed, it completely doesn’t speak to any woman’s life, least of all a scenario where actually he and his family run the place. So how do we talk about it in the public domain? It will shift the understanding in the courtroom. It is not going to come out of the bright head of any lawyer or cop. It is really work that we need to do together. I totally agree with Anisha about the very serious concern on these pen drives, where you want to raise an alarm and make political mileage out of it. But if you did not bother to pixelate the faces of those women, you care a damn about them. … It is being consumed as pornography. We saw how that video was released, what happened in Manipur when those women were stripped and gang raped by the mob. These are videos which are providing titillation and are lurid in nature. Not pixelating their faces and therefore causing havoc in their lives is something that needs to be taken very seriously.”
Vrinda mentioned that class action is obviously not a criminal proceeding. “You are asking for damages. Most understand damages largely as monetary damages, if you have caused harm or injury. You took the example of Bhopal, which actually is not the best of examples, because the government did not allow the victims to receive and to be the ones who are championing their cause. The government comes in between and decides how much they want to take and what they’re going to do with it – whether it’s making a hospital miles away from the basti that has been impacted in Bhopal. So we are then talking of damages. Now that is a different conversation. But how do we even reach that threshold that Prajwal Revanna owes anybody a damage? Do these women see themselves as a group? I’m not sure that kind of legal understanding will fit this scenario. But I do think that here you do have a situation, where the understanding of sexual exploitation and of power as well as of consent can be dramatically altered if we keep this conversation going.”
Laxmi asked a final question: “When we are talking about power, it’s not just political power people have asked and it’s been in many of our heads … to what extent have caste equations played out in this case in terms of who the victim survivors were, who were the enablers and of course the perpetrators.”
Anisha replied that caste does play a huge role in what has been happening, perhaps not in the direct, alleged assaults, but in terms of how much power the family has. Revanna’s family belongs to a landowning caste called Vokkaligas, highly feudal and socially dominant, concentrated largely in parts of Southern Karnataka, so that geographical concentration gives them a lot more power than it would give perhaps any other community elsewhere. It’s one of the reasons why this entire thing is so complex – because of the nature of the assaults. “Many of these women are party workers or wives of party workers, so how do you take this on? I think Vrinda was talking earlier about witnesses, right. That the women who have been assaulted can support each other as witnesses. But as far as I know, one woman did not know that this was happening to other women. All this came out only with these videos. How much of it other people knew we still don’t know. A lot of it from what we, my colleagues and I hear is that nobody had any idea that this was happening and for how long it has been going on. Even the women themselves, the ones who have complained to the police about being sexually assaulted can also not remember dates, years or the chronology of it. You know that kind of stuff… so it’s hard for the cops also. It might probably affect the investigation, but we don’t know. Caste did play a role in how much power this family managed to acquire because so many JD(S) members are in this.”
When they started out, the former prime minister, Deve Gowda, who started this party mobilised support from Vokkaligas, right? Also, some of it is by default, right? You are somebody from your caste, so you vote along caste lines. One thing that people generally tend to look at wrongly is that these dominant, powerful castes often vote as a block. They are the voting blocks, not the marginalised castes and once they began acquiring, they became a politician, chief minister, prime minister and so on. both these things fed into each other. The largesse of your political power gets distributed among people of your caste, your community, those who are close to you and so on. So what we can make about most of the women in these videos is that they are Vokkaligas. The community as a whole has benefited from this political largesse. You know what the Gowda family has acquired. That also makes it very hard for them, because of the caste connections. They became party members and support the party. Even today, you will find people saying “Oh no, Deve Gowda should not have had to see this in his old age. How is that relevant? Yet people do think like that, so then there is also a naturally patriarchal mindset that we all are part of, which tells you that it must be the woman only who’s done something wrong.
“So all these things feed into the kind of ostracisation and victimisation that these women are going through, apart from the original crimes that they face, so we don’t know the level of coercion involved. We don’t know so many things about this case and the fact that the police are also finding it hard to get any of these women to talk to them, because they’re all party workers.”
Vrinda made a final point about needing to think about these cases in a different way. “It’s good to see and very unusual to have an SIT, so all that is working well. But there is the delay that could run into the courts. They are going to be very conservative in their approach. They actually don’t believe that women think of themselves as having got trapped. Similarly, they see all these as trapped, through which they’ve had their share of fun, got something out of this man and now because the video is out, are lying – that’s the bottom line, in which most are going to wonder, how do we then explain the delay or the fear? How do you get expert witnesses? I believe that you know the way the women’s movement globally dissected cycles of domestic violence. We have not done that for rape nor have we understood it. We think of rape as one incident and it’s over. But actually, there is a whole ecosystem at work around this kind of power rape. We need to develop that granular analysis and bring that into the courtroom and have writings on it. That is how domestic violence entered the courtroom. I think we have so much evidence and experience in this country. We need to start placing that ahead of us.”
Conclusion
Summing up the discussion, Laxmi said that something one can do concretely has emerged. “Otherwise one is pretty helpless almost watching on the side-lines the way this has been unfolding, so I think there are a couple of calls to action, which I think are very useful in terms of keeping track of the case.”
On the issue of the investigation and what needs to be done, Laxmi said that we need to be able to convey its importance to a larger public in order for it to be useful. The media too needs to be cognisant of the things one needs to keep tag of, not just now but months and years in future, in order to get any kind of conviction. “Also, regarding your call to the women’s movement, the media and civil society about evolving notions of consent beyond a ‘yes and no’ or beyond the law is a very useful appeal,” she said. “I think we all are doing it in bits and pieces, but there’s a need to bring it all together, so I’m glad that it came up as well.”
On supporting the civil society effort, she said it is going to be a long haul. “We do need some kind of markers along the way to keep us on track and keep the case alive in terms of justice, while seeking not to keep the trauma alive. I think that is also a bit of a contradiction, because I remember that even in cases where we go back to survivors, they ask, ‘why are you raking it up now you know we’ve gone on with our lives’? This dichotomy of keeping the issue and the crimes alive, seeking justice and allowing the victim survivors to just get on with their daily lives with whatever support we can provide is also important,” she concluded.
Edited by Leena Gita Reghunath
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