WUNRN
Women's Feature Service
India - New Delhi
Widows of Behmai Massacre
Call forJustice
By Yogesh Vajpeyi
Behmai (Women's Feature Service) -
"I feel like something that has been used, abused by the world and then
discarded," says Munni Devi, a widow of Behmai village in the Kanpur Dehat
district of Uttar Pradesh (UP). Behmai was in the news 28 years ago when
Phoolan Devi and her gang of dacoits gunned down 20 men on February 14, 1981,
in this very village.
Like most girls in the region, Munni
was only 13 when her parents married her off to Lal Singh, a 14-year-old boy
from Behmai, on February 2, 1981. Local
custom required her to continue living with her parents in Tengua
village across the river Jamuna in the neighbouring Jalaun district, until her
'gauna' (second marriage ceremony after a year or two in which the groom takes
the bride to his home).
Photo: Munni was only 13 when her
parents married her off to Lal Singh, a 14-year-old boy from Behmai, on
February 2, 1981. Ten days later her husband was brutally murdered and ever since
life for her has been unbearable. (Credit: Yogesh Vajpeyi\WFS)
The teen bride was preparing for her
new life, but fate had some other plans in store for her. She was still in her
parents' home when news came in of the infamous Behmai massacre, in which her
husband too was killed. "I had not even seen his face. I only got to see
his dead body," she recalls.
A year later, tragedy struck young
Munni's life once again - this time she lost her parents. And before she could
come to terms with her loss, she had to pack her bags and shift to the home of
her husband's parents in Behmai. That was 28 years ago.
The helplessness and grief that Munni
Devi felt that year has not faded with time. In fact, abject poverty and
memories of the tragedy have made her life unbearable. "I have nowhere to
go. I have no child to support me. I receive no pension from the government. I
am at the mercy of God and my in-laws," she wails.
Immediately after the killings, almost
the entire state government machinery had descended on the crime scene. Led by
then chief minister, Viswanath Pratap Singh, the administration promised jobs
to the relatives of the victims and pensions to the widows. Nearly three
decades have passed and none of the 12 surviving Behmai widows receive any pension
today. Only one relative from each victim's family has been given a constable's
job in the state police.
"We did receive a pension of Rs 25
(US$1=Rs 48.6) per month for a couple of years, but then it stopped. We
approached district officials in faraway
Behmai is a hamlet of nearly 300
households, situated precariously on the ravines of the Yamuna river - the
southern most part of the Chambal valley, notorious for its dacoit gangs since
times immemorial. Besides subsistence agriculture, animal husbandry is the only
source of livelihood for the Chaurasi Thakur community that dominates the
village's social life. Those killed in the 1981 carnage included 17 Thakurs,
one Muslim, one Dalit and one belonging to the OBC (Other Backward Classes) community.
Contrary to the generally held belief,
the Chaurasi Thakurs of Behmai are not upper-caste Thakurs but reconverts from
Islam, who had been excommunicated by the Thakurs when they first embraced
Islam. Unlike the regular Thakurs, who have been dominant landholders in the
region for centuries, this community has fragmented landholdings. Also, they
are confined to 84 ('chaurasi' in Hindi) villages in the Etawah, Kanpur Dehat
and Jalaun districts of UP and they marry only amongst themselves. Although excommunicated
from the Thakur community, this isolated group follows Brahmanical cultural
norms characterised by an adherence to the practice of child marriage and
opposition to widow remarriage.
The Behmai massacre was never out of
the limelight. As the Phoolan Devi legend grew, movies were made and even
political parties became active here. But nobody cared to remember the tears of
Behmai's widows. With no help coming from either the state or society, these
women have today given up all hope of any support.
In the celluloid version of the
massacre (Shekhar Kapur's 'Bandit Queen'), Behmai was depicted as a village
inhabited by brutal rapists and this deflected attention from the plight of the
widows. In politics, while Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party used Phoolan
Devi as an icon of a low caste women's fight for social justice, his rivals
paraded the Behmai widows for counter mobilisation of the upper caste Thakur
communities. They even erected a Shaheed Sthal (martyrs' memorial) at the
carnage spot, where local politicians make ritualistic visits on February 14
every year.
But it is all shadow play. The
continuing and unmitigated plight of these widows represents the failure of the
state and its criminal justice system. "Victim's suffering, reparation and
rehabilitation are essentially matters of criminal justice system. Apart from
undue hardships the victims face, failure on this count can result in their
alienation and non-cooperation with the justice system or, worse, cause them to
take law into their own hands," says Bharat B. Das, author of the book,
'Victims in Criminal Justice System'.
This is exactly what happened in the
case of Behmai. To avenge the killing of Behmai's Thakurs, Phoolan's rivals
raided the neighbouring Astah village in Auriaya district, inhabited by people
from her caste, the 'Mallahs', and perpetrated another massacre.
A growing number of experts feel that
the Indian criminal justice is oriented towards safeguarding the rights of the
offenders and not those of the victims. Though there is provision for
compensation to victims, the police, the judiciary as well as the state, are
primarily focused on the conviction of the offender and not the plight of the
victims.
A classic study of 'Compensation to the
Victims of Dacoit Gangs in
The Behmai widows present another
paradox. Since they are not direct victims of the crimes perpetrated by the
dacoits, they are not visible.
Mahadei, widow of Ram Singh Shakya, who
belongs to an OBC caste, underlines the poignancy of the situation she, and
others like her, face in this region of the country: "When her man dies, a
woman is invariably left to die forever."
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