The next day,
early in the morning at 5:00 a.m…
At 4:30 a.m.
-4:30 a.m.? -Yes.
Around 4:30 to 4:45 a.m.,
we heard a knock on our door.
So, I asked him to check.
He said, "Who would come at this hour?"
We didn't open for 15 minutes.
Then we heard a voice,
"It's me, Akku. Open the door!"
Then he opened the door.
Akku said, "I need to talk to your wife."
He replied, "Sure!"
Akku said, "Not with you around."
My husband said, "Talk in my presence."
Akku said, "No, not in front of you."
Then Akku dragged him out.
The bathrooms were outside back then.
He locked him up in the bathroom.
He kept banging on the door.
Akku threatened me with huge weapons.
He said, "Come with me!"
I refused.
But he dragged me…
He forcefully dragged me out…
It was 5:00 a.m. and no one came to help.
They were all watching from their houses.
He dragged me past them but nobody tried to stop him.
They just holed up in their houses.
He dragged me to a distant place.
And then he…
he…
he did terrible things to me.
Things so vile that I can't even talk about them.
He said, "I'm done with you!
Or come with me.
I'll marry you right away."
I told him, "I'll never go with a vile man like you.
My husband is a good man.
We'll live our lives somehow."
Then I went to our landlady's friend's house.
I told her everything.
She said, "Don't worry, child. A bath will wash it all away."
So I took a bath and came back home.
There, I met my husband.
I told him everything.
He said, "You didn't do it willingly.
I'll accept you as you are.
I'll spend my life with you.
I won't marry another woman.
How can I leave you because of this?"
I think ours was the first incident.
-Right. -Right?
Yeah.
Had anything like this happened before?
Mine was the first case in our area.
-It began with me. -This is where it started!
The start!
Why are the women in jail? Why were they arrested?
They must get justice. The five women must be freed.
Meanwhile, the city police have made special arrangements
here in the court premises
for the five women to be brought to court shortly.
Now the immediate worry is
to secure the release of the five women who've been arrested.
Today, more than 400 women
are claiming to have done this,
that they have committed this gruesome crime,
and will surrender.
People started gathering at 10:00 a.m.
And from 11:00 to 11:30 a.m.,
thousands of people have gathered.
The square near the court
was filled with protestors.
The media was out in force.
Thousands of people gathered outside that court.
Release our women! Release them!
-Say it loud! -We are one!
-Say it proud! -We are one!
The court stopped working when the lawyers joined the protest.
They raised a ruckus and said, "Let's go to the District Judge."
Our case came up at 11:30 a.m.
By the time the order was passed, it was 4:00 p.m.
At that moment,
we were anxious.
We were scared and were crying.
Finally, we were released on bail.
CENTRAL JAIL, NAGPUR
Just as people gather to see movie stars,
a crowd had assembled to see these women.
Many social organizations were there to felicitate them.
We couldn't stop laughing because people brought a lot of sweets.
They were force-feeding us.
-Move aside! -Stop!
-Move back, please! -Please stop!
-Hold on! -Make way, please!
Move back!
This is a historic day for women, their unity,
their struggle, and their freedom.
We women…
we did a noble deed by slaying that demon.
-Say it aloud! -Jai Bheem!
The five women accused in the Akku Yadav murder case have been released
but preventing a recurrence must be
the responsibility of the government and the police.
Even after such a grave incident
neither the Chief Minister nor the Home Minister
has visited this area to understand the pain of these people.
Old mothers are weeping,
sisters demand protection of their honor…
The opposition party, BJP, might deny politicizing this incident.
But with the upcoming elections,
many political parties will seek to make this an electoral issue.
Akku Yadav, a higher caste man
who killed, raped, and robbed in this community of Dalits
those at the bottom of the caste ladder…
And the next day,
the incident acquired a political color.
They claimed, "Our women…
who were victims of this upper caste criminal
have decided his fate."
No, Akku wasn’t a casteist.
No way!
He didn’t know much about caste
nor did he have the time for it.
Is there a non-Dalit woman this man ever raped?
In all the 40 cases we know that it happened…
has he ever laid his hands on a non-Dalit woman?
All his victims were…
All the survivors of his rapes were Dalit women.
He murdered Dalit women.
He had no biases as an oppressor.
He didn’t care if the woman he raped was a Dalit, an OBC, or a Yadav.
A criminal has no caste. What caste is a rapist?
There were no Brahmins or upper-caste people among us.
It was a community of poor people.
He targeted them.
Only slum-dwellers and squatters,
those were the people he harassed.
He would throw stones at women and look the other way.
This was an old habit of his.
If a woman came strolling along…
…it’s only natural for her to look around while walking.
Everyone does this, right?
He would ask, "What are you looking at?"
As if women should be cattle, heads down and blinkered
looking at nothing.
I would signal, "Run! He's coming!"
"Stay here! Hide! Get in!"
I would warn my girls.
I would hide them in by-lanes or in other houses.
"Hide! He's coming! Run!"
I was scared he would molest my daughters or my daughter-in-law.
"No school for you!
I'm here! No need for school."
-Yes, he used to speak in Hindi. -None of our kids got an education.
-Not hers, nor hers. -Nobody’s children.
Our girls had stopped going to school
for fear of him.
What if he stops our kids on the road?
My mother married me off at 16 because of him.
We were naive.
This problem affected me and my sister.
My elder sister married young.
That left me no choice, my mother got me married at 16.
We have lived there for a year or two.
I was 13-14 years old.
Food was scarce.
We'd go hungry for two to three days at a time.
When we were playing, we didn’t notice that we were starving.
We would get by on water.
We would eat what we could,
we would spend five paise on onion rings.
My parents used to fight a lot.
Mother would often get beaten.
Father was short-tempered.
He didn't like being at home.
He was very violent,
especially with me.
He was an addict.
He provided little other than beatings.
We later found out about some goons harassing people in our area.
Someone by the name of Akku Yadav…
He forced himself into people’s homes.
But he never came to our house.
Hearing about these visits scared us
so we wouldn’t step out.
It was raining that day.
The road was waterlogged.
We had a slab outside our door.
They stepped on the slab to avoid the muck.
His arm hit the door.
My father yelled, "Who is that motherfucker?"
meaning who’s come here so late.
And then…
they barged right in.
They had weapons.
There were five or six men
and they were sloshed.
It was late at night.
Then he grabbed me.
My mother tried to stop him.
She said, "Let go of my daughter."
My father came forward to protect me.
My father said, "Let go of my daughter."
And began to hit Akku.
To deal with my father, Akku needed both hands.
And I slipped out of his grasp.
I hid for a couple of hours.
I was too afraid to come out.
Two hours later, I came out.
People had gathered there.
My mother started examining my body.
She checked me over thoroughly.
She asked, "What happened?"
"What did they do?"
My father couldn’t ask, so my mother did.
I told her I was hiding.
But people thought that I had been abducted.
As a family, we put a lid on the matter.
But who can seal people’s mouths?
Only the person who goes through it knows the truth.
If they had taken me,
I wouldn’t have survived.
They were carrying weapons, right?
If one had attacked, the others would've pounced, too.
But people kept talking anyway.
So I told them nothing happened.
Even today I can stand tall among them.
Those who have been wronged, feel ashamed.
Even when people talk to me today
I’m not scared, I do not hide my face.
No one will say what they've been through.
Because everyone values their honor, right?
Today, their kids have grown up.
What if they find out about these things?
Only a woman is forced to carry the shame
so they won't speak about it.
For a woman to come forward and say, "I've been raped"
is really difficult in our society, even today.
Society still scorns her.
They say, "That’s the girl who was raped!"
Even though she's the one who was attacked
and may not have done anything to create this sexual attack on herself,
she has to bear the burden of becoming "impure,"
that she has somehow violated the norm expected of her
that she should keep herself sexually pure.
My mother abandoned me as well.
"You've shamed us!"
"You've ruined our family's reputation!"
"We don't want you in this house."
She threw me out on the same day.
My own parents pushed me away.
The oppressor should be condemned.
The woman is not at fault.
Did she invite trouble?
Some people tend to blame the woman.
They say she must have provoked the man.
Mostly, women are seen at fault.
Women blame other women as well.
Change your mindset.
Mindsets must change!
It is often seen in slum areas
that women find other ways to earn,
to supplement their income.
I don’t think such acts
can be called rape.
I would say that…
the local criminals
avail of the facilities these women provide.
He never harassed any women, never.
An issue was made out of nothing.
If he had wronged so many women,
maybe a few would have been silent.
But someone would have complained, right?
Nothing like that happened.
In Akku’s case,
I have no recollection
of there being any news
published by me during his lifetime
of him harassing the women of Kasturba Nagar.
And yet from 1999 to 2004,
Akku became such a serial rapist,
so dangerous that women had to kill him in court?
This can be a great story for a web series.
The situation in the courtroom at that time
resembles the climax of this old film.
First, the women who broke into the courtroom
shut the door from inside
and then started throwing chili powder into Akku's eyes.
The theory that the media was pushing,
that women sought justice
by killing a serial rapist,
is not completely true.
This murder was not caused by multiple rapes.
It was gang war.
Some of the accused were his old associates.
You can say that they were his gang members.
Their involvement in this murder shows us
that this was an internal gang dispute
and they colluded with locals to commit this crime.
The police are in Kasturba Nagar to investigate
and take statements of the boys
and they’ve been arresting boys since yesterday.
We can't even step out of the area.
If they see us outside, they'll arrest us right away.
Every boy between the age of 20 and 30 was scared.
They had stopped working.
We lived with the fear of what would happen next.
And then the police handpicked the boys,
saying, "We've to arrest X number of boys
and charge them with gang war."
DEMANDS FOR JUDICIAL PROBE INTO AKKU'S MURDER
SEARCH BEGINS FOR THE ACCUSED IN AKKU MURDER CASE
The CID team arrested me
but I didn’t give them any names.
I only testified against the woman who gave my name to the ACP.
That was the case.
The police tried their best
and largely succeeded in breaking our unity.
They should have investigated first.
They should have found out who was guilty and then arrested them.
They were arresting people at random.
The culprits were free and the innocent arrested.
The next theory they came up with was
that a Naxal Group is generally behind such acts.
So a Naxalite is the mastermind.
Who could that be?
Advocate Vilas Bhande's senior, Gadling, represents alleged Naxalites.
So they made up a rigmarole and put it in the charge sheet.
This murder was committed in court to pressure the judiciary
into releasing the Naxalites.
So, who did it? I did it.
REAL CULPRIT IS VILAS BHANDE MRS. YADAV
BHANDE MAY GET ARRESTED ANYTIME
For no reason, the police are arresting boys and taking them in.
Where were these people before?
Where was the CID? The Commissioner, ACP, DCP?
Why was there no inquiry before?
We have slayed a demon. What did these boys do?
The police are muddying the waters to safeguard their jobs.
They're lying.
The State CID team was present when Yashasvi Yadav
and other police officers said,
"Give us ten boys and we'll never step into the area again."
-Did the police say this? -Yes, they did!
-You can ask them! -Yes, they did.
Ten boys?
"Just give us ten boys and we’ll leave you alone."
KASTURBA NAGAR CONFLICT COMMITTEE
This is not a gang war.
We demand that the State CID stop this nonsense
and release all the innocent boys who have been arrested.
If you want to arrest someone for Akku's murder,
then arrest all the women who killed a goon
to ensure their own safety.
In our quest for social justice, we did a good deed.
I think…
it took us a month.
In September 2004, the Fact Finding Report came out.
Work was done on a war footing to publish the report quickly.
Only then the atrocities of the police could be halted.
We interviewed a lot of people in the area.
Many different women. An old woman, some college girls…
All told us that they were physically abused.
At first, there was no series-of-rape theory.
But later this theory developed and grew
that Akku Yadav had raped four, five then ten women.
And a few days later, the newspapers said that
the Fact Finding Committee claimed he raped more than 100 women.
I don't believe this.
It was a little exaggerated.
How can a man commit so many rapes?
He used to do it every other day.
If he gets sex with any woman he chooses,
why would he marry?
It was like an addiction for him.
Akku was a horny pervert,
what they call "chamdichor," a hymen-thief.
He was constantly searching for sex.
He invited me once.
"Brother, it’s on tonight. Do you want to join me?"
I said, "No thanks."
That’s how he was with the ladies.
I've seen it.
They say, "Once a tiger tastes blood, it gets addicted."
This was the case with Akku.
Lust drove him crazy.
He didn't care if the woman was old or a child.
It made no difference.
When he wanted it, he got it.
There were five or six of them.
Five or six of Akku’s men.
They knocked at her door.
"Open up!" they screamed.
Her mother asked, "Who is it?"
He said, "I’m from the police."
Thinking it was the police, she opened the door.
He dragged her out by her hair.
He locked her mother in the house.
Her mother was screaming from inside, "Somebody help! Stop him!"
They ripped her clothes off and raped her.
She was begging, "Please let me go! You're like my brother!
Please don't do this! Help me!"
She was screaming.
"Please help me, brother! Please help!"
"Please save me!" How much she screamed!
Not one of these impotent bastards came forward.
They just peeped from the windows.
There were so many houses around.
If everyone had come out, could he have done it?
He couldn't have raped the poor woman.
-And she was pregnant. -She had come home to deliver.
He raped the poor soul right on the main road.
She knocked on our door but I couldn't help her.
He had his gang with him.
If I had interfered, they would have killed me.
Some of the boys in the area were also involved.
This rape was truly disgusting.
At 10:30 a.m., the mother came to me.
She had admitted her daughter to Mayo Hospital.
I asked her, "What happened?"
She told me that seven men had raped her daughter
but not a single soul came to help.
She asked me what to do.
I said, "Let's file a complaint."
At Indora Police Station she said, "I can’t do this!
You live far away but I stay in Kasturba Nagar.
He could kill us anytime."
I told her, "You’ll be complicit too."
But she said he had threatened her.
"I'll come tomorrow and do this again!
Day after as well!
We'll come at the same time.
If you file a complaint, we'll kill you and your daughter."
That’s how he'd threaten women in the locality,
"If one of you complains, I'll kill the whole family.
I'll chop everyone up!"
Such were his threats.
We did go to the police, we tried.
But they would pass the buck.
"You do it," "No, you do it."
In the end, nobody would come to help us.
We waited at the police station for a long time
but our complaint was not registered.
The policemen blamed me instead.
Their question to me was…
"Your wife was having an affair with him, right?"
It took me six months to cope with the incident.
I couldn't think anymore.
Yes, I was at fault.
I couldn't protect her.
There was a reason, a situation.
I kept thinking day and night
about how to seek revenge.
I'm not sure if I should say this…
I tried to take revenge several times.
I made six attempts.
But didn't succeed.
He never came alone.
He always brought five or six men along.
I would peep from doors and windows wondering if he’s coming.
I couldn't sleep. I was always on full alert.
I would often feel, "Can't I fight this myself?"
But for the safety of my home and that of my family,
I had to shut up.
We, men from the slums live hand to mouth.
And we have young daughters.
If we challenged him, he might abduct our daughters.
We had no one to stand up and confront him.
No support from the area or from the police.
What could we do?
They had weapons.
What did we have? Sticks.
What good are sticks?
Here our women are being violated
and we can't do anything.
We often felt completely worthless.
We began to drink.
How else to cope with the trauma?
One lost the desire to touch one’s wife.
Only the seared heart knows its pain.
What could they do?
They were filled with rage
but they were helpless.
Oppressed, suppressed, it became unbearable.
We sisters decided!
Both of us decided.
It’s time to finish him off!
Let’s have done with him.
I told her, "Don't worry. I'll go to jail for you!
I'll go to jail but we’ll finish him off!"
Why? Because he would've killed us anyway.
We'd rather kill him first!
Have some courage!
And then three days later, he came home…
He sat on the bed and placed his knife beside him.
"What have you cooked?" he asked.
I said, "Chutney." He said, "Give me some food."
I got him some food.
I left him to eat.
We mixed chili powder with water.
Our plan was to blind him with chili water
and stab him to death.
Then we’d dump his body on the tracks.
That was our plan but it didn’t work.
He sensed it!
As soon as he sat down on the bed, he knew.
He knew we were waiting for him.
He left his knife and ran out.
I tried to call him back, "Come, have a seat."
But he never came back!
How could we follow him outside?
He would have signaled his gang with a whistle.
After we failed, we knew he would attack us.
So we vacated our home and left the area.
We sneaked through the byways and back lanes,
looking over our shoulders as we walked.
We were scared that he'd kill us.
We sneaked along the gutter.
We had our kids with us as well.
We held each other’s hands in the dark.
We didn’t take our belongings.
Our lives were all we had.
Our home might seem like a stick house
but we had slogged to make it a mud house.
Then we made it to a brick and stone house.
Our blood and sweat had gone into it.
How heartbreaking it was to leave home.
His reign of terror was at its peak for two years.
Many people just left.
They just went away.
The interior of the area emptied out because of him.
In Nagpur’s Jaripatka and Pachpaoli areas,
people fled their homes in terror of Akku Yadav.
This is Usha Narayane's house.
Usha was the last person Akku threatened before he was murdered.
My name is Usha Madhukar Narayane.
At that time, I was fully focused on finishing my studies at the earliest.
We weren’t doing so well at home
so I wanted to improve my family’s situation.
Education was the way out for all of us.
Usha is my sister-in-law. Usha Narayane.
She's my wife’s younger sister.
She had studied hotel management
so her clothes were a little "modern."
Because of that,
Akku made her the object of his lust.
Initially, I used to carry my clothes in my bag,
especially because of Akku.
But if I got late and couldn’t change
then I had to return home in the same uniform.
He would always comment on my clothes.
Your legs should be covered.
You shouldn’t wear shorts.
Because he would stare.
Once, the manager was on leave
so he sent a colleague to drop me home.
Back then there was no road so we had to walk back home.
When we reached the water tank,
his gang was seated there.
That's when Akku commented,
"You must be getting it from both sides.
You must be tired after providing good service."
Those words felt like blows.
He said them in front of a stranger.
What would my colleague think of me?
I was so shaken by those words
that all my education and work felt worthless.
I would be at college from morning till 6 p.m.
From 7:00 till 11:30 p.m., I would work.
And a man can simply say something like that!
Such horrible words!
How is one supposed to react?
Just ignore it? Walk away?
Should I respond? Something had to be done.
So much has happened.
It is painful to even share some of those things.
How people tolerated so much?
It was the last week of July.
One night,
everyone was fast asleep but I heard some sounds
as if someone were walking around.
I thought it was some animal prowling around.
So I went back to sleep.
But the sound increased.
My house walls had loose bricks.
So I pulled a brick out,
and looked out…
There were 10-12 people coming and going.
I couldn't sleep all night,
wondering what was happening outside.
When they left, the woman came running to me.
She asked me what could be done.
I told her to go file a complaint.
We went to the police station and told them everything
but the police refused to register our complaint.
They said, "Filing a complaint is not a joke.
It’s not a game for children. Do you have any proof?"
The Crime Branch policeman there
told Akku about us.
He told him that a young girl and a lady had come
and he identified me.
Everything I had to face after that
was so horrible
I don’t think film villains
could dream up what they put me through.
He gathered his entire gang
and surrounded us from all sides.
Akku was ready to explode.
He announced, "Let's see who comes to save Usha today."
They also brought acid with them.
He said, "We will throw acid on your face
then you can flaunt your beauty everywhere."
He had already disconnected our landline.
I had a mobile phone.
We called my brother-in-law.
He said that his house had been surrounded as well
and he couldn't step out.
That day, Akku swore
he would do terrible things to me.
He swore at my family.
He announced he would parade me naked.
Then he’d have me gang-raped
and then chop my body up.
What he had done to Asha Bhagat…
Chopping her breasts, hacking her vagina…
And more, he said. He would do more.
He said he would do worse to me.
I knew then that I was in serious trouble.
My sister-in-law and my mother were in danger too.
So I asked my family to leave the room.
They said, "No. We will all die together."
"How can we let you die alone?"
I pleaded with my brother, "Take them away.
Please forget about me. Don’t worry about me."
They said, "We have been together for so long,
how can we let this bastard rape you?"
But we really had no option.
So very reluctantly, my brother moved everyone
into the other room.
Everyone in the locality was hearing this
but nobody dared to step out and stop these goons.
I couldn't fathom what to do.
I don't know how I thought of it.
I pulled out the gas cylinder,
and dragged it all the way to the door.
Then for the first time, I screamed,
"I turned on the gas. If you barge into my house,
I will strike a match!
My house will go but I’ll take you with me."
I was going to die anyway.
Why spare them?
Subtitle translation by: Bharath VH