After repeated visits to a faith healer, a Kashmiri teenager underwent an abortion following alleged sexual assaults. Her family is now seeking justice amid social silence and delays in crucial DNA evidence, reports Babra Wani
Wearing a grey pheran and a cheetah-printed hijab, she lowered herself to the floor, her hands visibly shaking. She paused, struggled to speak, wept quietly, and then slowly began narrating her ordeal.
“I never thought he would do such a thing,” she recalled about her rape. Barely 13, she alleged she was raped by a faith healer from a nearby village on the pretext of healing her. “I have psoriasis all over my body,” she said, “that is why my mama took me to him, because my father has the same problem and his condition is worse.”
When she visited the faith-healer’s home for the first time, unaware of what lay ahead, she did not realise that the man her family trusted would later betray them.
I met the teenage victim at her residence in a South Kashmir village. Her home, a modest two-storey house, is in a village a bit far from the main street. And a few kilometres from the rapist’s home. They used to trek the kilometre-long distance to meet the healer.
Her father stood quietly in a corner, frail and withdrawn, his skin reddened by psoriasis. The condition had passed on to his young daughter. He appeared deeply troubled, his eyes marked by distress and helplessness.
A Shivering Kid
When she entered the room, the same space where one of the assaults happened, she started shivering. She was wearing a black mask to cover her face. I comforted her before I asked her to share her ordeal.
She pointed to a corner, as if to hell, where he usually sat every time he visited the family. He had visited the family four times, and during one of his visits, he had assaulted her once, she said.
“When he came that day, I was with my parents in the field. He called my mother and asked where we were,” she recalled, tears rolling down her face, as she stuttered to continue, “I left the field before my parents. I told them that I would go before you and open the door for him.”
Without knowing, she reached home, opened the gate and let him in. “As soon as we entered the room, he sat in the same corner. I sat on the opposite window.”
Then it happened. As soon as she went near him, he asked her to sit in his lap and open her drawstring. “At that moment,” she recalled, while tears rolled down her rosy cheeks, and went on to soak her hands, which by now were shaking uncontrollably, “I thought khodaya mei gaetch kabar gatchin yeti. When he undressed me, I was too stunned to talk.”
Soon, her mother arrived. “What I saw was unnatural. I saw my daughter sitting in front of him, her legs stretched,” the mother remembers.
Even though the girl said the rape happened that day, her mother asserted it was just an attempt.
The First Incident
Realisation hit the teenager. “I remembered that on one of my visits to his home, sometime ago, I had woken up to find myself completely naked, just in my inners. I was confused why.”
After that incident, she refused to visit the faith-healer, “I gave different excuses. I told my family that I was unwell, that I had schoolwork.”
She dodged three subsequent Sundays. After skipping the visits, the faith healer sent the family a message asking them to bring the girl to the healing session. Finally, an unwilling girl was taken by her mother and aunt to the faith-healer again.
The aunt remembers the meeting. “I tried entering the room where she was being treated,” she said. “But I was scolded and asked to go back.”
She said she could sense that the man was not of good intentions. “He looks at you in a way that makes you uncomfortable,” she shared her observation. “As women, we can sense how a man looks at us, so I could read that he was not a good man.”
The mother, dressed in a grey pheran and a maroon stole, recalled one of the earlier incidents. “One fine day, when I accompanied my daughter for one of her treatment sessions, I noticed my daughter was not around,” she recalled.
Usually, the mother accompanied the daughter to the hall, on the third floor, where the treatment sessions were held. “That day, I noticed my daughter was not around. So, I went to find her, and the search ultimately led her to the hall.”
What she witnessed there was no short of a nightmare.
She saw her daughter naked. “I do not even remember whether what I was seeing was real or not. I saw she was just wearing her bra. I do not remember whether she was wearing her underwear or not.”
She faced a blackout. She could not understand why her daughter was without clothes. Only one question, “What must have happened?”
She asked her daughter, but “she did not know.”
“I was unconscious the whole time,” the daughter recalled, “I do not remember the details of the day. I just remember that when I woke up, I had no clothes on.”
She recalled drinking water before leaving with the healer to apply medicines. “Usually, I did not find anything unusual because to treat me, he usually touched me, and it all happened in front of my mother,” she said.
Not only that, it was the trust factor between the family and the healer that mattered the most.
“We never knew or thought that he was capable of doing something like that,” both the mother and the daughter said in unison.
But, the mother recalled, her eyes red with desperation, sorrow, and fear, “he had even touched me once. He touched my arm and then moved his hand towards my chest, touching it.”
The mother kept questioning the daughter about the day, after she found her naked, but the daughter had no answers.
The hall, both the mother and daughter recalled, is a big room, where there are stacked beddings, a mat and nothing else. “It was the same room where previously I was treated,” the teenager said.
The Crisis
The horrors did not end there. Months after she realised what was happening to her and after stopping the ‘healing session’, she experienced a sharp pain in her abdominal region. “Initially, I thought I had kidney stones, even though I had missed my periods for two months,” the teenager remembered. “I did not suspect anything unusual.”
Her visit to the diagnostic centre changed everything. Her father accompanied her. And during the scan, it was revealed that she was pregnant.
A minor’s pregnancy was met with suspicion. The diagnostic centre staff informed the mother over a call.
“It was around 2 pm, and I was working at home when I received the call. They told me, ‘Do you know your daughter is pregnant?’ The land beneath my feet was shaken away. I could not fathom what they were saying.”
She had not accompanied her minor daughter that day. So, when the diagnostic centre technicians realised that the minor was pregnant, they questioned her.
Before revealing anything to her father, who accompanied her that day, they called her mother. “As soon as I gathered my senses back after hearing that devastating news, I asked them not tell my husband, as it would send him into shock. I feared losing him.”
The young girl was found to be five months and seven days pregnant, leaving her family devastated.
Initial Probe
Shocked, on their own, the technicians and staff present at the diagnostic centre had already questioned the minor, asking her who had done it. She said she told them it was the faith healer from the nearby village that she had been visiting for months, who had raped her.
The staff from the diagnostic centre informed the police, and soon an FIR was lodged under the relevant sections. The faith healer was arrested from a nearby place.
The family did not tell anyone in the extended family. “We only told the family of her younger uncle, whom I have brought up like my own son,” the distraught mother said. “And it is he who is very adamant and determined to bring our daughter to justice.”
The family then decided to abort the baby. The abortion took place in a government hospital in Srinagar. “A child carrying a child is the nightmare of every parent.”
As soon as the complaint was lodged at the police station, the investigators sent her samples for forensic and DNA testing. “The report is still pending,” the mother said, “they say that the chemical used in the testing is not available.”
A top police official told me over the phone that the culprit was granted bail on those grounds. “The judge said that the reports were not out yet and granted him bail for a couple of days. However, we arrested him again. And then we moved an application to send the sample outside Kashmir to get it tested,” the officer said.
Coercion Followed
When the faith healer was released, his disciples and followers celebrated. “They bought and sacrificed animals. They blew firecrackers. They celebrated like anything,” one family member of the teenage victim said, “and later, police took action against them as well.”
What is the worst part, the aunt of the victim lamented, is that the followers spread a rumour to tone down the case, claiming that the rapist was ready to get “our minor daughter married to his son. He is way too older than her.”
Spreading rumours was not the only thing they did, “they even sent people to daunt us. They sent people with money offers and whatnot. And without any shame, they did that.”
This was a follow-up to what the rapist had already done. The daughter had revealed that when the accused came to her home that day and undressed her, he had warned her to keep mum and not tell anyone or else. “He said he will have my father and brother killed. That is why I never told anyone about that one encounter,” The victim told me.
Fearing that the rapists influence might be the key factor in denying them justice, the family appeared in a media interview. As soon as the interaction went on air, people opened up to them, “We received calls from different people who shared their own experiences.”
One woman, the aunt revealed, called and told her that her sister-in-law had visited the accused once, “and he, on the pretext of examining her, took her to a separate room where her had put his hand in her chest. She then had confided in a family member and told her that the peer looked tharki. She said, ‘yeh aadm itheek nahi hai.’”
Enigmatic Silence
Before meeting the victim at her home, I, along with two of my colleagues, had visited the village of the accused. Located a few kilometres from the victim’s home, we went there on foot. One thing that I observed about the place was that people looked at us with suspicion, and another thing was that I saw dead animals at a few places. I noticed that they had no injuries or marks, but still their bodies screamed that they had been lying there for days, or maybe weeks.
We tried talking to a lot of people, but it was a disappointment.
We met a woman who was carrying a wicker basket. Her small daughter accompanied her. We first followed them into a lane. And then asked them to stop. We told them that we were researchers because revealing that we were journalists would have put us in a tough spot.
They stopped. We exchanged pleasantries and greetings. And then we started the conversation, “kya aap jaanti hain ki jo ye peer kay khilaaf ilzaam hain, kya who sacch hain, kya woh aesae shakhs tha, kya aap ne aesa kuch experience kiya kabhi (Do you know whether the allegations against this peer are true? Was he really such a person? Did you ever experience anything like that?)”
But her response took us by surprise. She told us that she did not know him and had never visited him. But, she said, “there is no smoke without a fire. It must be true, then only they talked about it. But what did you hear?”
She counter-questioned us. And most of the people we encountered that day asked us the same question.
“We never visited him. We do not know him much. But a lot of people, especially women, visited him,” another woman told us, “but I met his mother a few days ago. She was about to tell me the whole thing, but two boys stopped to listen, so she did not tell me anything further.”
But we noticed that a man nearby gestured to her to leave. Before we could ask her if she knew someone who could talk, she left in haste.
However, one of her statements got stuck with me in my mind, “If women did not visit him bepardah this would not have happened. It is against our religion. Men lose their control, women have to be cautious.”
The man and the woman looked at us with strange eyes and moved forward.
A few steps from the spot, we met another man. He was accompanied by two young children. We asked him if he knew anything. “I am not from this village,” he replied, “But why do you ask? Who are you?” he questioned us. We avoided answering him and walked away.
But, soon, a car stopped in front of us. It was he, with two other men, “these men are from here,” he said, “ask them whatever.”
But when they heard the name of the accused and when they learnt that we were looking to know more about him, they said, “We are not from here,” in unison.
The whole village almost echoed the same response. One of the residents from a neighbouring village then revealed, “They have made a pact, the villagers, that they will not talk about the man or the incident. But this village has always been scandalous. I was told to be wary of the inhabitants of the village.”
Unfortunately, we did not find any witnesses or testimonies. But we stopped by a shop and interacted with two men, who must have been in their thirties; they were engrossed deeply in a conversation. We asked them if they knew anything; their reply was not expected at all.
“It is all a lie and a conspiracy against him. He is a nice man. Had he been a culprit, he would not have been freed.”
Their response, victim-blaming, is what most of the people did. It disappointed us. The court verdict is still not out. The police are sure that the accused is the culprit, and then the multiple threats that the victim’s family received.
In Isolation
But the family is bearing the brunt of their media appearance. The victim has stopped going outside the home to play. She cries and spends most of the days inside her house.
“I once went outside, but people questioned me, asked me uncomfortable questions, and then I came inside again,” the victim said.
The young girl is very intelligent. Her words are clear. She wants to be a doctor, but this incident has left a deep mark on her: “mentally I am not well.”
Her mother said that the accused, who has been an educator throughout his life, has taught her brother-in-law and sister-in-law, both of whom stated that the man used to punish female students by pinching them, “my sister-in-law told me that he was never a good man.”
The mother and the aunt, however, are both upset with themselves. “I have always been a strict and protective mother. I do not know how and when I became so careless that my daughter suffered so much,” she regretted. “She has always been closer to her chachi, to her fuffi, but she could not even share her misery with them. That is what pains me the most.”
The victim lamented that she is herself confused why she could not share anything with anyone. “Whenever I tried, it was like fear washed over me,” she admitted. “My family thinks maybe the peer had put some sort of black magic on me.”
But now with the accused behind bars, and with her parents’ trust and courage, she is clear, “mujhe insaaf chahiye (I want justice)”
She is clear. Not mincing her words. But this statement has left me with a question: “insaaf, justice, this word is too big for a small girl like her.” And her mother knows that too. “It is not her fault. I took her there, she did not even know him,” she admitted her fault. “We had only heard good things about him. In fact, in the first sitting, her Psoriasis was cured too.”
Even though the family had sought medical help as well, “but it was costly for us. And we did see how my husband, after spending thousands of rupees, could not be cured, so we relied on faith-healing, not knowing that it would land us with a bigger issue.”
The family of four is economically weak. With no reliable income, they depend on others. However, they are determined; they will fight for justice till their last breath. “I owe this much to our little girl,” the mother said. “And we will never stop her from pursuing her dreams and aspirations. She will always lead a normal life, that is what we pray for. We will not stop her education. We will never stop her dreams, and with courage and determination, we will let her follow her heart and support her always.”
The family believes that fighting for justice is necessary. “So that no other child goes through this pain ever again.”
(As a matter of policy, The Kashmir Life is not using the identities of the accused or the victim or even identifying the location till the court pronounces its verdict.)
