The twisted truth – Who is to be blamed?

A recent event that happened with a friend of mine has shocked me to my core. His dad hailed a rickshaw from his home to the station, a 20 minute ride. Being a share rickshaw, the driver stopped a couple of minutes later and 16 year old girl got in. The ride was going fine, until suddenly 10 minutes later, the girl fell (or jumped) out of the rickshaw. Not realizing what had happened, my uncle, a patient of schizophrenia, panicked and asked the driver to keep going. This might sound absurd to many of you, but those of us who deal with such patients would know that this is a genuine reaction of a person suffering from the same. However, the auto driver in his sane mind tried to flee from the spot. He was stopped by a mob and some traffic police and both were handed over to the cops. 

The girl reached the police station along with her family approximately 2 hours later. She had been treated at a hospital and got two stitches on her forehead. She came to give a statement that all was well and that my uncle wasn’t responsible for the mishap. The police even assured my friend’s mother that they will let uncle go by the evening. Suddenly, appeared this man who is a relative of the girl and asked the police to write an FIR against uncle, thanks to his ‘pehchaan’ (influence) in some political party. He put charges like molestation, kidnapping and attempt to murder. Shocked right. So was his family. It has been 3 weeks to the incident today, and my uncle is still in jail. 

Now let me tell you what the FIR states. The girl’s family has given a statement saying that she was pulled in the auto by my uncle and that he then tried to molest her while she kept yelling for help. And then, he pushed her out if the auto and tried to flee the scene.

There are a few issues I have with this made up story that has a lot of loop holes. This incident happened at 2:30 in the afternoon on LBS marg in Mulund, which is a pretty busy street. How come not even one person heard the girl scream? And if the girl was pulled into the rickshaw and was being molested on the back seat, why didn’t the driver stop? Let me tell you here that the auto driver was not even arrested. All he said when asked was, ‘Mujhe nahi pata kya hua’ (I don’t know what happened). If this story was even 1% true, he would have known what happened and in fact would have been arrested for kidnapping. How can my uncle kidnap a girl in an auto? 

The media hammered the last nail in the coffin when they published the article in the papers. Respectable newspapers like TOI also had this news in their paper without verifying the facts or examining the loop holes in their story. Isn’t it the responsibility of the media to uncover the truth? In these times when we are taking safety of women very seriously, everybody jumps on hearing the words molestation and rape. Verifying the details isn’t anyone’s priority. Our society is programmed to think of women as the victim. I don’t know why the girl’s family has framed my uncle to be a criminal. Is it for the ego of the relative who only wants to show his political pehchaan? Or to get any kind of financial aid from the government? But it is certainly not for justice.

I agree many of you will argue that by fleeing the spot he wasn’t showing humanity, but please understand he is a 56 year old schizophrenic patient. What happened with him post that is absolutely inhuman. He is in judicial custody and is not receiving proper medications. Please think of this person as your own father and imagine what he and his family would be going through in these tough times. How a middle class family is bearing the expenses, the humiliation and the harassment. 

We want bail be granted to him. I ask the people of this city that I call home, this city that I call just, to support and pray for him and his family. To speak up against such discrimination from the police and the media. Before you or I become a victim of the same.