Thread by @genderlogindia

Separate thread of sexual violence against Minorities during Pogroms
(Trigger warning- contains details of sensitive cases) :--

Anti-Sikh Pogrom 1984-
Sikh women living @ Trilokpuri were brutally raped
Girls as young as 7-8,
women as old as 80
sacw.net/DC/Communalism…

Several Women were gang raped while their young children were present right there and pleading with the perpetrators to spare their mothers.

Sikh Women, during the Pogrom, were gangraped & then raped several times.
The entire act was overseen by political leaders leading the mob

Painful testimonies were recorded by the few victims who registered FIRs
They were sexually abused, later witnessed massacre of their family

They also had to witness their daughters and mothers and sisters being abducted and/or locked inside a room while the crime was carried out

+ A painful testimony of a mother who had to witness her daughter being sexually harassed by the attackers/mob and her hands/legs broken.

+ Another testimony of a Sikh Women who was raped right before the eyes of her young children
Later witnessed her son being burned alive

The justice still eludes the victims of Anti-Sikh pogrom in 1984
Several Sikh Women are widowed, displaced, and surviving w/o compensation.

1992-1993 Anti-Muslim Massacres post Babri Masjid Demolition-
The number of women who were sexually violated still remains uncountable.

In the events that followed the Babri Demolition, one of the worst carnage in the history of organised communal violence were carried out

Large scale Pogroms erupted in several places. It's estimated that about 1700 Women, men and children were killed, about 5500 were injured+

+ with an unknowable amount of Muslim Women raped, gang raped and later killed (in an attempt to wipe out 'evidence' of the carnage).

+In one of the gruesome incidents, a train was stopped on the outskirts of Surat. The 'mob' stormed into the coaches & butchered passengers.

+ The Women inside the Coaches were raped and gang raped in full public view of the passengers before they were hacked and killed.

+ In the Commission reports, it was later found out, that in the several cases that erupted throughout the country, Police were directly..+

+ involved in the carnage. They were often the Rapists, along with the mob, instead of participating in the duty to protect vulnerable women

While it is not a secret that the Police/Admn often stands by and watches and in ocassion participates in looting or vandalizing, it was+

+ shocking to read that the Police men themselves had been implicated in case a of gang rapes of Muslim Women during the Pogrom.

Here is Human Rights Watch report detailing out the various ways in which Muslim Women were targeted during Pogrom hrw.org/reports/1996/I…

2002 Gujurat Carnage.
The accounts of sexual violence carried out and the manner in which it were, remain unprecedented in our history.

To sum it up- a Muslim Woman had this to say about the three days in which the crimes against Minorities were carried out, with opposition.

The Muslim Women had to face the humiliation of being dragged out of burning homes, stripped and paraded naked on street. 2002.

Foreign objects were inserted into their private parts. Their children were shown to them before throwimg the little ones into the fire.

Their breasts were cut off and reproductive organs mutilated and religious symbols branded onto their naked skins. Pregnant bellies gutted

Horrors of it is still alive in the minds of those who survived.
Mass raped in full public view, gang rapes were abundant during the pogrom

While we have all heard the tragic story of Bilkis Bano, here's a link to the report named Survivors Speak- outlookindia.com/website/amp/th… 2.3t

In the report there are detailed accounts of several painful testimonies to the horrors witness and lived through by the Women victims. 2002

Many Muslim Women gave their testimonies to an apathetic Police force before they died in hosp
Many were found naked and bleeding on streets

Several Women who were brutally mass raped and gang raped in full public view and were left for dead in bushes,had to drag themselves up & +

+ reach nearby relief centres or dargahs and mosques and relatives' homes - naked and bleeding and with injuries.

+ What's also unprecedented is the method used, through careful planning & organizing,by the 'mobs' to dispose off the 'bodies' & 'evidence'

+ After the carnage of mass raped and gang raped and several forms of sexual violence carried out, the women were often hacked/burned alive

+ This chilling technique was carried out in every place where the Genocide were organised.
No bodies or evidence survived for investigation

+ "Not even a 20 day old infant or a fetus in the mother's womb" survived the massacre and the torture.

2007-8 Kandhamal Anti-Christian Pogrom Odisha.
I was 15-16 when the months of carnage in the state took place.

One of the much famed cases of sexual violence in Kandhamal Pogrom, is the gang rape of the Nun's case while 300 people stood by and watched

Police and CPRF forces stoody by and watched and her pleas for help fell on deaf ears.
She was gang raped among ashes and broken glasses.

After she was tortured and the Father who was with her was doused in petrol with the intent of burning them alive, she was paraded naked.

+ Around the entire town, the town that had watched her being publicly gang raped by a 'mob'. She was forced through this humiliation.

+ A lesser known gang rape case during the Pogrom, the victim was a Hindu Adivasi girl protecting the orphanage that sheltered Xtians.. +

+ Her name was Rajini Majhi. The orphanage of Christian kids was set on fire and Rajini was stripped and gang raped before being thrown into

-+ before being thrown into the fire that was turning the orphanage into ashes.
This is how they destroyed the evidence of their crimes.

Throughout the ordeal she called to her father who lied unconscious a few metres away.
The mob didn't spare anyone associated w/Minorities.

Coming back to the Nun's case, she was put through hell during Trial, which resulted in acquittals of 6 of the accused and implicated only 3

'lack of Evidence' is the major roadblock that has so far shielded the accused and resulted in acquittals of several perpetrators.

In the case of Rajini Majhi, she tried to escape the burning orphanage she was thrown into after she was gang raped.

Naked body didn't catch fire easily.
She tried to escape twice, on her throd attempt, she was beaten with a log on the head mercilessly, repeatedly.

The Rapists saw to it that the lower parts of her body was completely destroyed when they threw her into the fire, thereby destroying any evidence to the fact that she was mercilessly Gang Raped.

Her father was lying unconscious few metres away.

Coming back to the Anti-Sikh Pogrom, here's a screenshot from the book 'I Accuse: Anti-Sikh Violence 1984' by Jarnail Singh

(Was DMed by a fellow Minority).

When Sikh Women begged to be spared, perpetrators laughed at their face , mocked them, threatened to cut their breasts

A painful testimony by a survivor of the 1984 Pogrom. Bhagi Kaur