http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=131482
Death of a Dalit girl goes unnoticed Medha Gupta, 30 March 2008, Sunday Is the awareness of death and rape only concerned with the rich or the beautiful, at 'exotic' places? What about the poor and the helpless? Don't we have any responsibility towards justifying their loss as well? TRUE, THERE are many concerns hankering the media and the society at large in the Scarlett story. However, does our society concern itself only to the extend where it can serve its sensational instincts? Does the 'low profile' rape and brutal murder of a seven-year-old Dalit girl in Kaushambi district of Uttar Pradesh on March 16, concern nobody, simply because the media does not have any discourse on that? The young girl is anonymous for any regular newspaper reader as the story of her rape and murder was only featured in the Indian Express! That may be because the media would never be able to get titillating pictures of this Dalit girl at exotic settings! (See Tehelka cover story on Scarlett). The inertia is not new to a society that has chosen to feel for a Jessica Lall or a Priyadarshini Mattu, conveniently overlooking the inhuman murder of Bhotmange family in Keonjhar or the everyday death that many Dalits go through as they relieve themselves of the mandate of human scavenging. When I tried to google the details of the recent Kaushambi incident, all I got were barely a handful of pieces. First, was the March 19 Indian Express report with the headline 'Dalit minor raped, body found with arm and eye missing', which surprisingly got featured on the front page. The second piece was again the same syndicated story of the Express on the website of All India Christian Council. The third was a story by the Hindustan Times, which carried the story with reluctance as evident by its lack of facts. It stated that the eyes of the girl had been gauged out and arm amputated by the rapists even as the body was sent for postmortem and no concrete facts had been established about the reason of amputations. In contrast to this, at least one news report or editorial or opinion piece on Scarlett case is printed daily in newspapers The seven-year-old anonymous girl is just not good enough for any follow-ups what so ever. Without underrating the concerns the Scarlett killing has finally evoked, I feel extreme anguish for myself and the society that we all are a part of, walking with blinders, which only allow us to see what is convenient to the eye. The brutal death of this child by two Airtel employees working in the company's tower at the Koilaha village should evoke a few concerns. Was a rural Dalit girl an easy prey? Why did it take two whole days to find the body while it lay decaying in the fields? Angry villagers torched the tower where the minor was raped and did not allow the fire brigade and police to douse the flames. They also stoned the police party and blocked the movement of vehicles by keeping the girl's body on the GT road. The blockade was lifted after the SP of Kaushambi, KS Emanuel, rushed to the spot and ordered 'lathi' charge. Doesn't the grotesque sight of the dead raped body of a seven-year-old girl being put on a highway by her very own parents, an act not just demanding justice and answerability? It is also a desperate plea to our society to register her loss. Is it also an unknown plea to register the absence of any discourse by the media on many such anonymous victims time and again? As I write this, I am conscious about those last words stated by SP in the Hindustan Times report on this inhuman act. He said, "Today the situation is normal."
