Childhood interrupted: Family awaits justice 8 years after baby was raped
Courts, YouTube and broken time “This is the app, Didi, the one I was telling you about.” One Sunday, over a customary lunch, Madhav thrust
Courts, YouTube and broken time “This is the app, Didi, the one I was telling you about.” One Sunday, over a customary lunch, Madhav thrust his smartphone at me and waited patiently as I scrolled the page. It’s called “eCourts Services”, and when I entered the case number, as prompted, I was greeted by a flurry of details, presented neatly in a table, and in order of the earliest to the most recent court hearings. The family's first hearing was on March 12, 2018, over eight years ago, back when Madhav and Rakhi were both testifying and insisting to prosecutors that they would be present every day in court. That eventually changed when someone on the legal team chided them for subjecting their tiny kids to the rigours of court and the arduous bus journey between Rohini District Court and home. “What are we to do, Didi?” Madhav would ask. “It’s not like we can leave them at home anymore.” Madhav was showing me all the information he could now find online. It’s not like we can leave them at home anymore. by Madhav, Pia's father “A relative who works in court told me it was helpful – and then, once I’d downloaded it, I looked up how to use it on YouTube,” he said. This was a relief because, for many years, the rigmarole of the hospital, police and courtroom could easily befuddle the family, leaving them out of the loop.
I remember how it started – with a dizzying flood of medical and legal info that threatened to swallow them whole. The FIR and the doctors at AIIMS, for example, both noted that the rape had caused a perineal tear in Pia’s body – a laceration between the vaginal opening and anus that caused her to pass stool and urine from the same opening. In early operations, a team of doctors managed to seal it and craft a temporary, “artificial” perforation in her lower abdomen that helped eight-month-old Pia urinate and defecate. That temporary perforation was sealed months later. If Rakhi felt the weight of tending to the gauze and bandages that swathed her baby – dressings she had to clean and redo several times a day – she never said so. Instead, she showed her anger through her steadfast presence in court, packing both of her young children into her arms and heading to the courtroom, whether they had been summoned or not. I would go with them and sit on a wooden bench outside the POCSO courtroom with the parents, watching Pia and Muskan pirouette in their frocks. Under India’s federal structure of government, the central government – through the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act of 2000 – mandates each state’s Child Welfare Committee appoint a non-governmental organisation or a social worker to protect a child’s interests in court. The NGO, in turn, appoints a lawyer to advise the family during the trial.
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