Who the fuck is Priyanka?

Priyanka was a nobody from a tiny village in Maharashtra, one that no one’s ever heard of and no one even cares about. She was an 18-year-old NCC cadet, she wanted to be with the army, but then who gives a rat's arse for such down market qualifications and ambitions? Worse, with a name like Khairlanji, her village doesn’t even merit a stopover for a quick piss when we zip by the countryside on our long cross-country drives. Even to unload, we city guys prefer familiar sounding places.

This is what happened to this luckless teen, and if you are already too bored to listen to her story, I don’t blame you, do go away by all means to more interesting stuff.

On the morning of September 29, 2006, 12 sloshed ‘upper caste’ men attacked Priyanka’s hut. They strapped her on to a bullock cart as one would a disobedient animal, and dragged her out to the village chaupal. Then, they took turns to rape her, following which they completely stripped her, and paraded their ‘trophy’. But this was only an appetiser. The main course involved beating her naked body with bicycle chains, and publicly gang raping her all over again, and this went on till the mutilated Priyanka stopped breathing. However, not satisfied, the goons went on. The teenage corpse was raped yet again. On realising the dead body was no longer rape-worthy, the men shoved iron rods into her blood clotted genitals, and used pickaxes to disfigure her face. Now at peace, they threw the remains into a ditch, and walked away in celebration.
An identical fate awaited Priyanka’s mum, Surekha, as her dad, Bhaiyyalal, hid behind a hut watching helplessly. And all this over a petty land dispute with Priyanka’s family, a dispute the teenager perhaps had no knowledge of, and was certainly not a part of.

Here’s what has happened since: all the onlookers say they saw nothing happen. The police, who as usual arrived long after, refused to file n FIR.
Though photographs of the mutilated bodies with rods in the genitals are believed to have been taken by a police patrol team, none saw the light of day. The post-mortem report conducted the day after the incident indicated no rape had happened. Under pressure from the Dalit community, the bereaved father has received some monetary compensation, but those bastards who tortured and mutilated an innocent young life, walk free.

Now here’s why I’m using horrible language AND boring the shits out of you: We, the so-called educated, evolved, wise, city slickers, seem to want to give a damn about Priyanka’s story. Because we are bloody hypocrites, all of us. We will send out text messages to news channels, we will shoot out angry letters to editors, we will hold candlelight marches when a Jessica Lall is denied justice. Because that crime happened in an up market joint in New Delhi, involved Page 3 animals and bada netas and bada names, and because the dead girl was an aspiring model. But we won’t do that for Priyanka because she came from a village unworthy of being even a pisspot, because she lived an unhappening life, because she was a nobody to the rest of us. In short, we don’t give a fuck for what happens to Indians who are not like us, the non-PLUs, as chattering socialites would call them. The media isn’t interested either, because Jessica’s tragedy sells, Priyanka’s doesn’t.

So, Priyanka’s case will go on endlessly. The rich and the powerful from the village will continue to do their bit to sabotage the evidence. The name Priyanka will totally vanish from our collective minds, that is if it’s registered in the first place. And another Priyanka will meet the same fate before too long.

A few years later, we will recall Jessica Lall’s story vividly and tearfully. And as for the village girl, we’ll be shrugging with, “Who the fuck was Priyanka Bhotmange anyway?”