Outlook English - Print Subscribers Copy Outlook English, 30 July 2018 | Page 10

MIND THE GAP
by Neel Shah in Mumbai
A
couple stretched out for the
night on a soiled bedspread on
a footpath, hardly attracting a
second glance in this city of
strangers. The children—dau­
ghters aged six, four and two—
were tucked in between the parents.
The father, 28, couldn’t keep his eyes
shut. He would pull himself up at the
slightest sound of a footstep and
check on his eldest child, who was
lured by a neighbour to his shack in a
Mumbai slum and raped nearly two
years ago. They had to ret­urn to the
city this January to appear before
the court that is hearing the case.
This was their first night since arriv­
ing in a stifling general coach of a
train from Calcutta.
The family’s last tryst with Mumbai
was horrifying. In January 2016, the
fat­her had joined a small unit that did
zari embroidery on saris, but had to
leave the city just two months later
when his eldest child was sexually ass­
aulted. Seeking justice for his daughter
and the compensation promised under
the Maharashtra government’s financial
assistance scheme for the rehabilitation
of rape and acid-attack survivors, he
feels bogged down by the legal and adm­
inistrative intricacies. “This is why
people say one should never get involved
in court cases even if one is a victim,” he
laments. Without a regular job, he needs
the money, but the state government’s
heart and wallet don’t appear to be in
the same place when it comes to dis­
bursing compensation under the
Manodhairya Yojana, a court-mandated
scheme launched after the gang-rape of
a photojournalist at Mumbai’s Shakti
Mills in August 2013.
Audrey D’Mello, helping the family
with legal assistance, is aghast at the
way the authorities treated them.
“They stayed for at least two weeks in
the streets or the shanties in the east­
ern suburbs (at Cheeta Camp’s Dhobi
Ghat area in Trombay), where they had
lived for a while in 2016,” she says. It
was only after D’Mello, director of
Majlis foundation, which provides legal
aid to victims of sexual assault, wrote a
strongly worded letter to the court that
the family was called this June for rec­
ording evidence. The process was
completed in a day, but they had to stay
10 OUTLOOK 30 July 2018
No Yojana to
End the Wait
A Maharashtra scheme to compensate rape
survivors has delivered a lot less than it promised
on in Mumbai, unable to get confirmed
train tickets until July 5.
It’s been more than two years since the
crime, the filing of the FIR and the sus­
pect’s arrest, but the family hasn’t rec­
eived any compensation yet. “The child
is eight now, but not a single penny has
come their way,” says D’Mello. Instead,
the family was in for another shock
when D’Mello came to know that the
District Legal Services Authority
(DLSA), the sanctioning agency for the
scheme, had issued a cheque of Rs 1 lakh
for the victim, but withdrew it later as
the family was no longer living in
Mumbai. The family was unaware of the