Almost everyone who is talking about Asifa (Don’t fret if you don’t know what happened to her, read on to find out) is speaking as if it was just another case of crime against women. It was not. Many on my timeline were comparing her with Nirbhaya. It is as if they want to put her in a box that people have become so used to hearing and be done with it. Everyone is crying to move away from her, her story, they want to do their bit, a tweet, a mention in their story, blah blah #JusticeForAsifa (they have done it before, this hashtag has been used with many names in past), and that’s it. But they do not understand that Asifa’s story isn’t another rape story, her story isn’t just another crime against women. Hers is an isolated story, the first of many to come if we don’t care enough to see it that way. It is important that we deduce what happened, profile (and not just name and shame) people who perpetrated this ghastly crime, understand why they did what they did (and no, it wasn’t raging hormones that raped this girl). Above all, we should understand and know more about the people who came out in public with tricolors and shouted slogans against a rape victim, and for the rapists. This has not happened in past, not on a large scale as this. What is it that motivates these people, who are these people and what has suddenly changed that they feel emboldened to come out and shout such brazen disgusting opinions. Until we do this exercise, my friend, and fellow reader, be warned, this will continue. This is the truth of our times. You can deny it but forget it not, denial doesn’t wash away the perpetrators, your silence, our silence, only emboldens the perpetrator; it doesn’t, that is the truth from history, silence has never emboldened the victim. Never.

If you possess a heart, not of stone, then I warn you beforehand that this is going to be painful. I tell you out of my own experience for I do not possess such a heart. I have cried in office, on the way home while reading and thinking about this little girl. I want each one of you to go through this before we dissect the crime and apathy that most people displayed later on. I have found her tale extremely painful to recollect and re-visit.

If you find these stories intolerable, Saadat Hasan Manto once famously said, it must mean that we live in an intolerable age.

Here was an 8-year-old girl belonging to some community that is insignificant to this exercise. Just think of her as an eight-year-old girl from your neighborhood, someone you know, someone you have talked with, someone you can imagine easily and one whose smile lights up your face for Asifa’s presence bought similar joy into Mohammed Yousuf’s family. Yousuf had adopted Asifa from his sister after his two children had died in an accident. She was their only child. If not for a 60-year-old local villager named Sanji Ram, she would have been alive today. Sanji Ram despised Bakerwals, a nomadic Muslim community that Asifa belonged to. Bakerwals move along with their livestock; spending summer in high altitudes and winter in plains. Their presence in Hindu dominated Jammu region has been worrying local Dogra Hindus for some time now. Sanji Ram is a seed born from this culture of hate. He wanted to scare her community away from their lands. It angered him if anyone from his community gave grazing lands to Bakerwals. In fact, he was observing Asifa for a few days now who was grazing her ponies on forest land that lied around his home. His plan was to kill Asifa in order to instill fear among her community. The whole plan was to kill and scare and not rape — primary difference between Nirbhaya incident or any case of rape that we all are trying to equate this with. The underlying seed wasn’t hormones or hate against women nor patriarchy, it was this hate born out of religious jingoism which is spreading like wildfire these days. Anyone who is considering and tagging her story under crime against women like other stories in past is doing a grave injustice to her life. A doctor needs to understand the real cause of your problem to cure it. If that person mistakes Pneumonia for common cold then the medicine he’s going to suggest isn’t going to cure you but is only going to aggravate the problem. Likewise, if we truly want to fight for Asifa, we first need to identify the real causes that led to her death. If not, it is anything but farce like those Beti Bachao Beti Padhao posters. That and those ‘Clean India’ billboards. They do nothing except giving us good feels about people in power. They appear every now and then on city centers and front pages of newspapers to constantly remind us about the government. You know how much does a full page ad in one newspaper cost? Around 40 lakhs each. What does that achieve? God knows. There’s one thing it does achieve, it acts on our confirmation bias. Next time when we see a clean platform, a clean street or anything that’s quite clean, we immediately attribute it to faces in those ads and billboards. We never care to ask if that particular platform used to be always clean as today or just happened to be so after those ads! Anyway, in that same manner, what wrong debates on Asifa, the desire to categorize hers as just another crime against women does is, it makes it appear as normal. We tend to talk about it in same helplessness as we talk about other victims of rape. Believe it or not, it may sound outrageous but we have been conditioned after years to treat news of rape as normal now. It has become any other news for us. One that’s supposed to be heard, read if there is time and then well, forget. Normal rape, even gang rape doesn’t heat our newsrooms anymore, it doesn’t call for debates, either the crime should be ghastly like Nirbhaya or victim should be a child or someone famous or perpetrator should be from influential family (politicians, film industry). Otherwise, we just don’t care. We don’t tweet or talk about normal rapes anymore. Isn’t that true? That’s why there is urgency in some quarters to pack this case in those boxes with rape and murder labels. But you should remember that this doesn’t belong there. Say, for instance, Nirbhaya’s was a ghastly crime but it wasn’t organized, it was not planned nor surgical. The perpetrators weren’t looking out for Nirbhaya in particular. But perpetrators in Asifa’s case were looking out for her, the plan always was to abduct her. If she was a Hindu girl and not Muslim girl who she turned out to be, she would be alive and all smiling today. That’s one aspect of it.

Now coming to the hard part.

Most of us do not know or don’t want to know what happened to her. One of the person in my office cafeteria was explaining the details of the crime and the lady sitting opposite gave that ‘eww stop it!’ remark and he stopped. It indeed is puke-worthy narration but one that we should know and remember. The thing is, the narration or story that we find hard even to read or listen in, occurred in real life; an eight-year-old girl went through that experience and finally lost her life. If you can’t even listen to it, just imagine what she must have gone through with. Here’s what happened to her. I do not want you to skip it. Take a break maybe, cry a little but read it somehow, even if you lose some part of your soul today.

While Asifa was inquiring about her missing ponies, Sanji Ram’s nephew along with his friend Parvesh Kumar aka Mannu led her to the jungle. Here they caught hold of her and pushed her to the ground. This was part of the larger plan shared by Sanji Ram with his nephew along with Deepak Khajuria, a Special Police officer. Khajuria had fetched a drug named Epitril used to treat seizures and sleep disorders from a local chemist while Ram’s nephew along with Mannu had bought four doses of local drug Manar from a nearby town. At this point in the jungle they force-fed Asifa with a single dose of Manar and made her fell unconscious. Ram’s nephew raped her here for the first time. Mannu too tried but for some reason could not.

The girl was then taken to a small temple managed by Sanji Ram. The next day, SPO Khajuria and Ram’s nephew went back to check on her. The nephew, says the chargesheet, lifted her head and Khajuria slid two tablets of Epitril down her throat. In the evening the nephew went again to the temple to light a lamp and found the girl still unconscious. The same night, he called up his cousin, Sanji Ram’s son, Vishal Jangotra, who is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in agriculture in Meerut. The boy asked Jangotra to come immediately if he wanted to satisfy his lust.

Jangotra arrived the next morning. Two hours later, they went to the temple where Asifa was given another three tablets. All this while, she was on an empty stomach.

On the morning of January 13th (she was abducted on 10th), Sanji Ram, his son and nephew went to temple where the uncle-nephew duo performed rituals. After Sanji Ram left, his son raped Asifa. Then she was again raped by his nephew, the juvenile. After this, the boy fed Asifa three tablets of Epitril and kept the other two under a heap of garbage. These have now been recovered by the police.

It was the day of Lohri. After the festivities in the evening, Sanji Ram told his accomplices that the time had come to kill the girl. That night, she was taken to a culvert in front of the temple by the nephew, his friend Mannu and Jangotra. Shortly afterwards, Khajuria reached the spot as well and said he wanted to rape the girl before she was killed. After doing it, Khajuria put her neck on his left thigh and tried to strangle her. He could not. Sanji Ram’s nephew then came forth and killed her by pressing his knee against her back and strangulating her with her chunni. Then, to make sure that she was dead, he hit her twice with a stone.

The body was taken back to the temple. On the morning of January 15th, the body was thrown in the forest.

– Asifa: The Anatomy of a Hate Crime, Rahul Padita

Horrible. Ghastly. Disgusting what humans could do to fellow humans.

People on twitter were thanking God for Asifa being drugged before raped. Some kindness before committing a ghastly crime, violating a women’s body. It had good number of likes and retweets. It is that escapade tweet like those which appear just after a bridge collapses or flood occurs in Mumbai with #SpiritOfMumbai hashtag. Remember the good stories at times of cyclone and floods, and when a bridge collapses or building falls? How suddenly news shifts from people responsible for tragedies to this good Samaritans? It is people’s escape mechanism. Our desire to find good and forget the bad. But you know what’s bad news? Drugs aren’t magical potions. Drugs don’t numb the pain. All they do is make you unable to react. They pull out your internal strength and energy. The ‘thank god she was drugged’ opinions make you imagine a dead body of an 8 year old that is penetrated forcibly by people one after another. The body that is cold, lifeless and incapable of feeling pain. That’s a lie. This opinion, false notion gives us thank-god feeling and fails to agitate us. But now you know that is not true. Drugs don’t take out the pain but make you incapable of reacting to it. And that’s the real horror of her crime. Try to imagine yourself lying in her place, and people you do not wish to even see coming closer to you and doing unimaginable things to you, penetrating you all while you are lying there, feeling insurmountable pain, shame and confusion but not being able to react to it or run away from that place. That’s not a picture we would like to be thanking God for.

Did you ever think what must have run through her head all this episode? When they first caught her and put her to ground, did she expect to be able to run away to her parents? Did she dream of her freedom? When they took her to that temple, starved her and raped her repeatedly, do you think she must have had the knowledge of why were they doing those things to her? Or just, did she knew what was happening to her? Did she wonder who these men were? What thoughts must have run through an 8-year-old? The rapes didn’t occur on one single day, they didn’t get over in one evening. They continued to starve and rape her for days together. There were times when she was left for herself. In those moments of solitude, was she thinking of her parents? Or was she wondering about this new pain in her private parts? Or was she thinking of her empty stomach? Remember the last time when you were hungry and craving food? Remember the pain? Now imagine yourself being forced by many men and starved for five days. Five days!

Last time when she was raped by Khajuria, do you think she knew this was the last her body would be violated? Do you believe she knew what was coming? Do you think she knew or had enough energy to make sense of the world? Did she cry out for help? Did she said ‘no’? Did she call out her parents? Who did she call? Ammi? Abbu? God? When the first attempt to kill her failed, did she thank god for being merciful? Or did she curse the god for not being done with it soon? Did she have any hopes left? Would you have hopes? Did she think that her parents will appear from somewhere now and save her? Did she even want to be saved anymore? I have tried to make sense of it all. But there is nothing there to make sense of. I have tried to think what those men, a 60-year-old, a police officer and two boys must have been thinking all this while. Did they ever try to feel her pain? Did they ever look at her face while violating her body? What did her eyes say when she was drugged and violated? Were they closed, blank? Did they laugh when she cried? What did they felt taking her last breath? And above all, when their families knew their crimes, did they accept them? What did the women of the house think of Sanji Ram? Did they fear the man? Did his children look up to him? What did the mothers of boys think of them? Were they proud of their sons? What is going on with them? How is their village responding? Are Sanji Ram and his family still getting respect like before?

Have you ever tried to think of Asifa’s parents? What might have run through them? Remember the first evening when their girl didn’t come home? Did they panic? What was their evening meal like? Did they had their meal? How did they sleep at night? What was their morning like? Did her parents go to the forest the next morning? Our mind tends to think of worse in situations like this. What worse than real must have they thought? When they first found their daughters body in the forest, what were their faces like? Did they cry, did they shout? Who did they shout at? Who did they cry for? What was it like? I have thought and thought about these questions. There are times when I think I should have not read about her. It is disgusting and so disheartening that nothing interests me anymore. It is not that I have left my meals or stopped living my life but left to myself, my mind runs to her thought. I can’t help but think of her and those five days. I have seen her happy picture, I have seen that smile of her and it is more painful to know she no more lives, to know those cheeks no more go pink, to realize those eyes no more go bright. Blind hate has taken it all.

I have cried in office; when I couldn’t hold on I went to the washroom and let myself loose. I have shed tears going home. I have sisters back home of her age. Her story worries me. It feels like a part of my soul has died with hers.

I was so disturbed when I first read this story. Going back home from office around 8 PM that night I saw a mother holding her child tight in waiting area outside office gate, whoosh came a father (or relative) with a little one on the fuel tank of his bike. Then on road back home, I saw maybe four or five couples with children sitting in between their parents on bikes. I kept wondering why were they keeping their child in between them or why did that guy keep the little one up front or that mother had her child close to her. Why were the children not left on their own? I had later also gone to buy some grocery in a mall and again saw a lady not letting her maybe 10-year-old girl away from her eyes. Why? It was after all a mall laced with security cameras! Have they all read Asifa’s story? Were they being protective just today or were they always been extra protective and I just happened to notice them now. I don’t know. My heart stops when I see a child’s face now. It suddenly reminds me of Asifa’s face. Any of this children could tomorrow be target of any hatemonger who roams amongst us; we all belong to some religion, some community and if this blind hatred spreads everywhere (which it has almost spread), then know this, that someone in your neighborhood, in school or office has marked you or your child. You can deny it as much as you like. Probably Yousuf thought he and his family would be spared from Dogra Hindu’s hate too. That’s the tragedy of our times where we think we are safe while others are being tortured, lynched, raped and hacked to death for no reason of theirs. Someday, this hate is going to knock your door. You never know when but someday it will. It disturbs me. It has been disturbing me for some time now. How these crowds gather all of a sudden, target some innocent life and then suddenly vanish into thin air. The violent vitriol that was initiated for political reasons has already spread out of anyone’s hand. It is here now amongst us. You know what happened after Asifa’s rape and murder came into the light? Her rape as ghastly as it was, the reactions and things that took place thereafter made me cringe a little more.

You must remember here that when Nirbhaya’s gangrape case came to light, whole country including Jammu and Kashmir were united against the perpetrators and in seeking justice for her; they held rallies, candlelight marches and what not. But in Asifa’s case, there weren’t any rallies uniting people against what was a heinous and ghastly crime, not even in J&K. But there was something else.

Within days of the murder, Hindu Right-wing individuals constituted the Hindu Ekta Manch, which held its first rally, led by Vijay Sharma, one time a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh activist and now a Bharatiya Janata Party man, on February 14, holding tricolour flags, and seeking the release of the accused. Ankur Sharma lawyer who had earlier filed a review petition against Article 35A is yet another Hindu Ekta Manch leader. District BJP president, Kathua was also among the crowd. Later, while addressing the gathering, he called it a fight between their nationalism and the “anti-nationalism of the Bakerwals”.

In another meeting, in the following days, attended by local BJP leaders including a minister, Rashpal Verma, legislator Kuldeep Verma and a local Congress leader, a call for boycotting the Gujjars and Bakerwals was given. They have all been alleging that when the Bakerwal community took out a protest march, they raised Pakistani slogans — charges that are unsubstantiated but they have helped build an anti-Muslim narrative in the area where communal polarisation had been on the rise for quite some time.

Last month two senior ministers of the BJP, Chander Prakash Ganga and Chowdhry Lal Singh, swooped in on Hiranagar and addressed a public meeting, where they described the arrests by Crime Branch as “jungle raj” and branded the nomads as “pro-Pakistan”. These parochial comments and Lal Singh’s visibly sexist remark, “so what if this girl has died, many girls die every day” remain unnoticed by the BJP high command, which is, otherwise, distancing itself from the campaign in favour of the accused.

– The Shame is Ours, NewsLaundry.com

This behavior wasn’t just confined to Jammu and Kashmir alone but was echoed by most on Social Media too. I have failed to understand where these people find the courage and inner strength to defend rapists of an 8-year-old girl. What motivates this dehumanized behavior? And how are they socially accepted? How do they go about their ways after giving such opinions? Also, didn’t this same people unite against Nirbhaya’s rapists? Did they unite then because one of the six perpetrators was a Muslim (the juvenile)? In fact, during the discussion around Nirbhaya’s case, one of the key talking points was around the juvenile. Was it because he was a Muslim? I know these questions are stupid and make no sense but then where is the sense in people holding rallies with tricolor and shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ while stopping people from filing FIR against rapists? Had Asifa been a Hindu girl, would the India united stand up and ask justice for her? If they did in such a case, would they be standing for justice in general or just to further their politicking? Forget people, did you or people you know, who stood up for Nirbhaya also stood up for Asifa?

The nationalists who go on distributing nationalism certificates, did your blood not boil when people rallied with tricolors shouting slogans against an 8-year-old victim and not against her perpetrators? Was it okay to use tricolor for such a thing? But then the perpetrator of Dadri lynching too was draped in tricolor, wasn’t he? How many of you did object to that? That masculine nationalism you display on streets appears farce to me most of the times. It is your mask to hide the bigotry and nothing more.

And you religious people, who stop at nothing while praising the ancient Hindu tradition and values, a girl was abducted, starved and raped for days in a temple of yours. I was expecting a huge rally, enormous outrage against such an act inside a temple if not specifically for Asifa herself. But conspicuously you were silent. How did such an act not agitate you? Did you not feel your religious sentiments getting hurt? Isn’t it strange how that feeling gets hurt and you hit streets if someone eats meat outside the temple or in their home but a rape inside the temple does not hurt it? I wonder if people would continue to visit that temple. After watching all these ridiculous protests, I fear they will. Would they then also take their children to pray to the same God before whom Asifa was violated for days? What would they pray and with what belief? If you are a believer, is your belief not shaken a bit after this incident? If it has not, I suggest you must check yourself if you are still a human, and has not turned into a soulless robot.

I do not know, how much has this incident affected you. It has totally disturbed me. And to be fair, I have felt a part of me has died with her too.

It could also be because of the reason that I read about Asifa after I read about Unnao (Uttar Pradesh, India) incident. Here again, a girl was gang-raped by a BJP MLA and his aides. Her father was then killed in police custody while she tried to hang herself before CM residence asking for justice. This whole week has been troubling. And then to see our media concentrating on Chole Bhature (a dish that few Congress men ate before their ridiculous 5-hour-fast) and not the rape — disgusting. Then I saw that tweet about a star anchor who had his ‘controversial’ debate at 8PM between Unnao rape victim and the BJP MLA’s wife! Unbelievable but that’s been true. I was only wondering how can people be so insensitive and irresponsible, and then came the news of Asifa.

I have not felt this much disgust during Nirbhaya case for then I was united with everyone who had come across her story. But here people seem to have picked sides as per their political bickering. I even heard how people weren’t letting those who wished to discuss Asifa’s story in WhatsApp groups saying “This group isn’t a political battleground… Don’t litter here with your…” What loads of crap!? These are same groups that discussed Nirbhaya case, talked shit about then government. It baffles me to think what happened to people suddenly. How have they become so insensitive and cowardly? If you do not feel for an 8-year-old girl, I’m sorry, you need to check yourself. There’s something wrong with you. All the people who changed their profile pictures, shared statuses and updates, participated in rallies during Nirbhaya incident, what stopped you from even starting a conversation about Asifa? Have you ever thought or observed this change in you? If not, you really need to introspect. You disgust me.

Finally, I hope and pray this repeats never and to no one. But you know that’s a lie. I’m consoling myself with a false hope. How would it not happen when the people who supported those beasts roam around all of us. Tomorrow, these very people who wrote “It’s good that she was killed” will come to haunt people you hold dear. Repeat ‘it won’t happen to me or people close to me’ a hundred times but do you really believe it won’t? It’s the dangerous times that we are living in where rapists are getting wider applause and sympathy while an 8-year-old victim gets people’s hate. You may deny that times are worse and may as well cocoon yourself in your hole but that will not change the reality. If you really want to put an end to this, you need to speak out. There are not going to be better tomorrows for speaking out. It is now before it’s too late. And for those who are silent because it is political or are feared for whatever reasons, remember what Martin Luther King Jr. said,

There comes a time when silence is betrayal.

I have faith in you, I believe you aren’t the betrayer. I do think, you will find inner strength and moral courage to stand up against all crimes. I wish you will break your silence on Asifa too before it is too late.

Wish only those who shouted ‘Jai Shri Ram’ while protecting the rapists really read the epic Ramayana. But that would be asking too much, wouldn’t it?

Thank you for reading this far. I would be very glad if you could comment below what you felt about this whole episode, the kind of coverage it received, the way in which people reacted or any other aspect of it. I would also appreciate if you could share this with your friends and people you know from all sides of the spectrum. I want people to read this and ask some questions to themselves for I believe this incident should break us all and make us rethink where we are heading as collective species.