In India, New Wave of Trauma as 11 Convicted of Rape and Murder Walk Free
Just as Bilkis Bano had started to rebuild her life after grisly communal violence in 2002, a state government cut short her assailants’ life sentences.
GODHRA, India — For 15 years, as she moved from house to house for her family’s safety, Bilkis Bano waited for assurance from the courts that the men who gang-raped her and murdered many of her relatives would spend the rest of their lives in prison.
That finally came in 2017. In the years that followed, Ms. Bano said, she had been learning “slowly to live with my trauma” from the grisly communal bloodshed that racked the Indian state of Gujarat in 2002 and devastated her family. She and her husband were now ready to settle into a new home close to relatives and restart their business selling goats and buffaloes.
Then, this past week, the 11 perpetrators walked free, welcomed with sweets and garlands.
“The trauma of the past 20 years washed over me again,” Ms. Bano said in a statement released by her lawyer on Wednesday. “I am still numb.”
She has stopped talking to anyone outside her home, Yakub Rasul, her husband, said in an interview. “They are now out,” Mr. Rasul said. “We are thinking, ‘What will they do to us?’”
The case of Bilkis Bano, a Muslim woman who was raped and her 3-year-old daughter killed by a Hindu mob, is a tragic reflection of India’s halting progress in addressing violence against women and of the deepening divides engendered by swelling Hindu nationalism.
The convicts’ early release came as the country marks 10 years since the horrific gang-rape of a young woman on a bus in the capital, New Delhi, which set off nationwide protests and led to collective soul-searching. The result was stricter laws, police reforms, wider protections for women and a continuing push to alter attitudes.
“I have one request to every Indian: Can we change the mentality towards our women in everyday life?” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in an address on the 75th anniversary of India’s independence this past week. “It is important that in our speech and conduct, we do nothing that lowers the dignity of women.”
But the freeing of the men on the same day as Mr. Modi’s speech — and at the same time that the government has faced criticism for jailing activists and voices of dissent for long stretches — showed how easily political machinations can undermine efforts at justice, analysts said.
Mr. Modi was the top official in Gujarat at the time of the 2002 sectarian violence. Then as now, he is accused by critics of fanning and exploiting the country’s religious polarization to consolidate the Hindu base of his Bharatiya Janata Party.
Some analysts saw the men’s release, after about 15 years in prison, as related to elections scheduled for December in Gujarat, the seat of Mr. Modi’s rise, where the B.J.P. has remained in power for two decades.