I have been reading this news as of recently and it made me cry, the severity of the barbarity of this crime is utterly inhumane and needs to be addressed to the world.
Aasifa belonged to nomadic Muslim community, who herd sheeps and goats for a living. She was adopted by her maternal uncle whose previous three kids died in an accident. She was gang raped by Hindu men in an nearby Temple (In a temple for goodness sake!), there was held in captivity, sedated and raped again and again by a juvenile, a young adult and men over 30 years old. She was held for 4 days and brutally killed on the 5th.
This happened in January in Indian Administer Kashmir, it took 3 months for this news to reach the world ears, because the local government and lawyers didn't want it to reach or attain nationwide fame. There were members of the ruling party of India, BJP, also involved in this case as they tried to defend the rapists.
I am numb from reading how her mother described her body.
"Her lips had turned black and her eyes had bulged out. It was a scary scene for a mother to see," she said. "She was my youngest child. It was horrific. She had faced a lot of barbarity."
"There were scars on her cheeks," she told Al Jazeera at their camp in Udhampur.
Her father also described how he felt when he saw her.
"Her face was full of scratches and bites," Akhtar told Al Jazeera, describing the marks of torment on Asifa. "I never knew they would do this to a child, her milk teeth were yet to fall out," he said.
Politcians, politics have ruined people's lives.
Their hunger for power and greed for money, authority have destroyed lives of innocent families and children. Their perverse ideas for how their country should be shaped has come at the cost of innocent kids such as Aasifa and other girls like her. They have polarised, nationalised and communalised a group of people and have demonised another group of people to further their agenda.
The lawyers and politicians coming at the rescue of these barbarics, are only doing it because of the communal hatred they have created within the Hindu community in Jammu.
"They said if our men are given the death sentence, we will kill you one by one. After Asifa's body was found, Hindu people came to us and threatened us," he said.
This is the threat Mohammed Akhtar received after the men were found guilty. Doesn't it infuriate at the injustice this family is receiving. A wise man once said "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere".
The Unnao Rape Case
Another example of injustice running rampant is a rape of the girl, at the hands of a BJP MLA. This misuse of power to terrorise a 17 year old girls life, she was unknowingly led to the house of MLA who then proceeded to rape her. Her father filed a complaint to the local police over there, then the police abducted the father and beat him to such a condition that he died because of his injuries the next day in the hospital.
This was happening for the past year, as the girl was running from one place to another demanding justice be given to her family. This case was finally brought to light after she tried to self immolate in front of the house of Yogi Adityanath CM of Uttar Pradesh. After it was brought to light, people once again flooded the streets asking the government to give justice to the victims, but they don't know that the people who committed the crime are the government itself. They have done, by creating and environment where government officials live like kings and have the authority to use the police like personal body guards.
This is no different to when congress was in charge, corruption still runs deep in the government but it has a new face and despite of all of this we have people, who are blinded by patriotism and nationalism , that they cannot look beyond to see what the government is doing to the country, to it's own people. That girl was a daughter a daughter of India and if India is run by ministers like them, then where is the safety for kids like her.
This misuse of power and hiding crimes is running rampant within the country because the general populace is silent. With Aasifa we had a Nirbhaya with a communal twist. Although the CBI has arrested the suspected minister, with Asifa it took 3 months before something was finally done.
These ministers and government officials have built their careers by bribing and dividing religious communities apart, they put labels on people which makes it easier for them rule. Labels have done only one thing in the past and that is to divide people, create conflicts and it's always a third party that benefits from all of this chaos.