Zarinabanu and her family, Muslim residents of Zikkar Hussain
Chowal, walk past their neighbor's house after salvaging whatever is
left of their burned and ransacked homes in Gujarat. (AP)

By Rama Lakshmi
Special to The Washington Post

KALOL, India -- Sultana Feroz Sheikh sat motionless, staring at the
mud floor in a dark, windowless room.

Three months ago, as religious riots engulfed the western Indian
state of Gujarat, Sheikh saw her husband and several relatives burned
alive. Then, she said, she was brutally raped by three men as her
4-year-old son wailed nearby.

Sheikh wants to see the criminals brought to justice. But Gujarat
police are routinely refusing to file charges against individuals
accused of rape during the violence in late February and early March,
because they say mob violence cannot be broken down into specific
crimes.

"It is difficult to determine who in the mob pelted stones, who raped
and who killed," said police inspector Ramanbhai Patil. Though the
riot on March 1 that claimed the lives of Sheikh's loved ones and
resulted in her rape engulfed the entire village of Kalol, she said
Patil has arrested only four men in connection with the day's events.

The violence then spread throughout Gujarat, where nearly 1,000
people, most of them Muslims, have been killed in Hindu-Muslim
clashes since Feb. 27. That was the day Muslims launched a firebomb
attack on a train carrying Hindu activists, killing 60. Countless
cases of arson, looting, murder and rape have been jumbled together
in what are known as first-information reports, or FIRs. Police have
filed "general FIRs," simply blaming riots on Hindu tola, or mobs,
and refusing to register individual complaints.

Arrests increased markedly after the Indian government appointed
K.P.S. Gill -- known as the "super cop" of Punjab state for his work
there in the 1990s -- to assist with law enforcement in Gujarat.
Police have arrested about 3,200 suspects in more than 300 cases of
attacks against Muslims in Gujarat. The suspects have been charged
with murder, rioting and arson. But advocacy groups say arrests for
rape are still rare.

"The police FIR said that a Hindu mob attacked a Muslim mob," said
Sheikh, who is Muslim. "I am not a 'mob,' I am a woman who was
gang-raped by three men. How can I hope for justice, when they don't
even register my complaint properly?"

Farah Naqvi, an independent journalist who is part of Citizen's
Initiative, a fact-finding team that recorded testimony of sexual
violence in Gujarat, called it "a piracy of silence."

"Cases have been filed against the nameless and the faceless," Naqvi
said. "When you register them as mobs, it gives you a basis and an
excuse for inaction. A single, collective FIR cannot take care of all
the individual losses, as the time, loss and place varies. And it is
especially true for rape."

There are no reliable estimates of how many women -- Hindu or Muslim
-- have been raped in the Gujarat violence. According to the
Citizen's Initiative report, however, almost every relief shelter in
the state houses people who are victims of or witnesses to rape,
molestation or other types of sexual assault.

Part of the difficulty in gauging the problem, said Sejal Dand, an
aid worker, is that "many women were raped and then killed or burned."

Dand said fear of the police, who have been widely accused of
standing idle as violence peaked, discouraged women and witnesses
from reporting crimes for days. When the victims and witnesses
finally did file reports, police often asked them to omit the names
of influential men, Dand said.

In addition, in India's conservative and inward-looking Muslim
minority of 130 million, even talking about rape is a matter of deep
shame and stigma.

In the village of Fatehpura, aid workers reported, a Hindu mob
dragged 30 young women into full public view, sexually assaulted them
and forced them to run naked. Yet the Muslims of Fatehpura refuse to
go to the police or even reveal the names of the women, fearing no
man would marry them, the aid workers said.

"There is a lot of denial on the issue of rape of Muslim women in
Gujarat," Dand said. Even after citizens groups published reports
with women's testimonies, many officials were dismissive. Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said in Parliament that reports of
sexual violence were "exaggerated," and the country's law minister
said only two FIRs have been filed for rape in Gujarat so far.

Sheikh hasn't filed one, because the police wouldn't let her, she said.

Her ordeal began on the morning of Feb. 28, a day after the attack on
the train, she said, when she heard hundreds of angry Hindus marching
toward the Muslim quarters of her home village of Delol, shouting,
"We will burn you!" She and her husband grabbed their son and fled to
some wheat fields, where they hid with a group of other
panic-stricken Muslims. Their homes went up in flames.

The Muslims retreated in a milk van the next morning to the nearest
town, Kalol. There, another Hindu mob surrounded them.

"One by one, they pulled out the men from the van and burned them. My
husband was burned alive in front of my own eyes as I screamed and
pleaded with them," Sheikh said, tears welling in her eyes.

Sheikh said she managed to jump out with her son, then ran toward a
nearby river. Eight men wielding swords chased after her.

"One of them grabbed my hair from behind and pulled me; another
snatched my son away," she said. They threw her down and hit her, and
three raped her. "They were ruthless," she whispered.

Sheikh ran and hid for days before going to a relief shelter in
Kalol. Ten days after the rape, she summoned the courage to go to the
police to file a report.

"To my surprise, the police said I cannot file an FIR," Sheikh said.
"They said an FIR already existed for that day's events."

Police officials investigating the Kalol violence said they could not
register two reports for the same incident. Because a general FIR had
already been filed, they said, the most they could do was attach a
statement to it.

Patil said Sheikh's case was weak anyway, because she did not undergo
a medical examination until more than 10 days after the alleged rape.

Citizen's Initiative recommends that special courts be set up to hear
women's cases and that their testimony be treated as the basis for
legal action if FIRs are not filed. And the requirement of medical
evidence should be dropped, the group says, because so many women hid
for days before going to the police.

Trauma counseling, according to the group's report, is the most urgent need.

For a number of emotionally scarred women now languishing in
shelters, consisting of tents in the scorching heat, simply returning
to their homes could provide the first healing touch. But homecoming
is fraught with risks, too.

Bilkees Rasoolbhai Yaqub, 19, was one of many women gang-raped
outside the village of Randikpura. She is the single witness to many
killings and rapes in Randikpura and has named three men in her
police report. Now Yaqub's Hindu neighbors say they will not allow
the Muslims to return to the village until she withdraws the names of
the accused in her police report.

The villagers say her statements are baseless; the police say Yaqub's
story contains inconsistencies and her medical report was negative.

But, asked an anguished Yaqub, "Why would I lie about my rape? Which
woman would invite social stigma upon herself?"

© 2002 The Washington Post Company