She was gang-raped at 12, became a mother at 13. Then the son she gave away tracked her down and together, they fought back

He was the child born of trauma — she was 12 when she was gang-raped in Uttar Pradesh’s Shahjahanpur in 1994. Her parents had got her to put the child up for adoption, hoping the door would shut firmly on her past. But here she was, the door wide open, asking questions of her. She had few answers then. Thirty years later, she finally does.

In 2021, her son got her to file a case against the two men who raped her. On May 22, a court in Shahjahanpur sentenced her rapists to 10 years in jail. “The DNA test matched one of the accused,” said Rajeev Tripathi, the government counsel in Shahjahanpur.

1994, Shahjahanpur

She was 10 when she was sent to Shahjahanpur town, 61 km from her home in Hardoi, to live with her elder sister and brother-in-law, a government employee. Her father, a subedar in the Army, would have different postings and so the family thought it was best for her to stay with her married sister, the second of six siblings, and get a good education.

Life in Shahjahanpur had got off to a good start. Her school was better than the one in the village, she enjoyed Hindi in school and wanted to become a police officer. “I hoped to wear the uniform and come home. That was my dream then,” she says, sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Delhi, where she was visiting after the court verdict.

One day, she got her first period. Later, since she was feeling unwell, her sister took her to a hospital. The doctors there declared her pregnant, but refused to carry out an abortion since she was only 13 then. (Express Photo by Vishal Srivastav)

But it was the walk to school and back that bothered her — past the graveyard near her house, past the leering men and boys. “There was this group of men who began following me. Of them, two were brothers (Naki Hasan, then 25, and Guddu Hasan, then 21). They were truckers and would park their truck near our house. They would trouble me and pass comments whenever I stepped out. The area we lived in was secluded and I used to be very scared,” she says.

She recalls that she was alone at home when the brothers forced their way in and raped her. The attackers didn’t stop at that. Over the next six months, they kept assaulting her. “I didn’t dare to (talk about the rape) because they threatened me. Those two men were known goondas in the locality and everyone was scared of them. They would openly brag about the people they attacked or killed,” she says.

One day, she got her first period. Later, since she was feeling unwell, her sister took her to a hospital. The doctors there declared her pregnant, but refused to carry out an abortion since she was only 13 then.

She says her sister and brother-in-law tried to file a police complaint but were “threatened” by the brothers. The family decided it would be best for her to move to Rampur, nearly 150 km away. Her brother-in-law applied for a quick transfer to Rampur.

In February 1995, she gave birth to a baby boy in Rampur. A relative arranged for the infant to be adopted by a couple in Hardoi. “They took the baby away. I only remember the delivery, nothing more. I was very weak. After that, I did not even know if the child was dead or alive.”

Later, she says, there were moments when she would think about her son and wonder where he was, but she never mentioned him to anyone. “Iss baare mein koi baat nahi hoti thi… Koi vikalp hi nahi tha (There was no talk of the child afterwards… There was no alternative).”

1999, Varanasi

Around four years later, when she turned 17, her family found a match for her in Varanasi. All was good and in 2002, she gave birth to a son. “It was a happy moment for me. I wanted to see my son grow up, bring him up,” she says.

Trouble started soon in the form of a whisper about an “incident in Shahjahanpur”. That whisper turned into a full-blown conversation. One day, she claims, her in-laws refused to eat the food she had made. Then, her husband, a farmer, stopped talking to her.

“He said, ‘You and your family members have betrayed me. What if your first child comes here? Hamari toh poori biradari mein badnami hogi (We will be ridiculed in the community). The situation turned really bad after that. I was completely ostracised,” she says, adding that she had no contact with her own family at this point.

She did not have a phone of her own and the only address she had was that of her sister. She would write letters to her but got no reply. “No one wanted to talk to me,” she says. One day, she finally got a letter from her sister. “She gave me her phone number. Dheere-dheere (gradually), I told her what I was going through. She said she would support me and that I should leave my husband’s home,” she says.

In 2007, she says her husband did not object when she told him about her decision to leave. In fact, he dropped her and their five-year-old son at the bus station, from where she boarded a bus to Renukoot in Uttar Pradesh where her sister lived. But she knew she had to start life afresh. Lucknow, around 460 km away, seemed like a good place to start. So she moved there and took up a tailoring job.

2009, a village in Hardoi

Meanwhile in a Hardoi village, a boy in his teens was tormented by questions: Why was his surname different from his family’s? Why did he look different? His adoptive parents “took good care” of him, he took on their upper-caste surname, but the questions remained. Then, as news of the “incident from Shahjahanpur” reached his village — through relatives and the extended family — his parents told him of the mother who gave him up.

At the age of 16, the boy decided to go looking for answers. He says a mama (uncle) in the village, a driver who travelled around Uttar Pradesh, “knew someone who knew someone” in Shahjahanpur. The mama made inquiries about his mother’s family and, with some effort and stroke of luck, they tracked her down to Lucknow.

In October 2010, with an address written on a parchi (piece of paper), the teenager set off in search of his mother. He boarded a bus to Lucknow and tracked her down to the hostel in Lucknow.

Though he moved in with his mother, he took his time settling in and adjusting to his new-found ‘younger brother’. For one, there was not enough space in the hostel room for the three of them. Then, there was the battle over who could claim their mother’s affection. There were frequent fights, but gradually, the three forged a bond. The world outside, however, continued to be unforgiving.

Once, while playing with a group of boys, someone called him “naali ka keeda”. That stung. When he had to fill the enrollment form for the senior secondary school, old questions resurfaced: Why did his younger brother have a different surname? Why did the two surnames denote different castes? Angry, he asked his mother: “Who is my father?”

She remembers dodging the question then, “par uske sawaal khatam nahi hote the (but his questions were never-ending)”.

2019, a house in Lucknow

Life was finally looking up. She took up different jobs, including as a saleswoman at a mall. She also cleared her intermediate UP Board exam and earned a degree in Political Science, before working at a real-estate firm. Then, she and her sons moved into a bigger rented space in Lucknow. Here too, the elder son’s questions refused to cease: “Who am I? Where did I come from?”

She says she evaded them until she could no more. So one day, she sat him and the younger one down, and narrated her story, starting from the nightmare in Shahjahanpur. “There was sannata (silence) when I finished. For a few days after that, my sons didn’t bring up the topic,” she says.

Then, one day, her younger son, then in Class 11, came up to her and said they must track down the rapists, file a case against them. “I was scared when I heard that. I told my sons, they are such powerful people. We should simply stay away. But my elder son initiated, said we should file a case… take help from the authorities, if needed,” she says.

Then, the three of them decided — they would fight the case. “How long would we have lived like we made a mistake? But I was scared of going back to that place, being seen by them or anyone related to them,” she says.

2019, a thana in Shahjahanpur

There she was, at a police station in Shahjahanpur, trying to file a first information report (FIR). “Just being there, back in that town, made me feel sick.”

The police asked her the questions that police do — when, how, what and where are the perpetrators now? “Kuch to bataiye … Naam, jagah, unke papa ki naam (Tell us something about the alleged rapists),” she recalls them saying.

In those 24 years, the town and the neighbourhood had completely changed. “I still remembered their faces and eyes. I knew their nicknames, but not their given names. I did not know if they were still in town.”

Sub Inspector Mangal Singh, who handled the case and is now posted in Ghaziabad, says, “We did not know how to track these two men down. So much time had passed. We did not know why she was coming to us after all these years. After that, she came back to the police station twice or thrice. I enquired about the perpetrators, but nothing concrete came up.”

In August 2020, with the help of a local lawyer, advocate Mohammad Mukhtar Khan, she was able to get the Shahjahanpur sessions court to order an investigation in her case. Over the next two years, she made frequent day-trips to Shahjahanpur and went around town, enquiring about the brothers.

The trips took their toll on her, mentally and financially, she says. “Every trip would cost me around Rs 2,000, which was a big burden since I was only earning Rs 15,000 (from her job at a real-estate company). But this time, I wasn’t lonely. My sons were with me. Also, my sister and friends pitched in.”

During one such trip to Shahjahanpur, she walked into an automobile mechanic’s shop and introduced herself as a relative of the two accused brothers. The shopkeeper said he knew them and immediately called up Guddu Hasan, the younger of the two brothers. His voice on the phone was all the confirmation she needed before informing the police, who tracked them down. In March 2021, the police filed an FIR in the case.

The police asked her the questions that police do — when, how, what and where are the perpetrators now? “Kuch to bataiye … Naam, jagah, unke papa ki naam (Tell us something about the alleged rapists),” she recalls them saying. (Illustration by Suvajit Dey)

SI Mangal Singh told The Indian Express, “We summoned the brothers to the police station. They admitted to knowing her since she was their neighbour, but denied the rape charges.”

In June 2021, the police collected DNA samples from her firstborn and the two men. The samples revealed that the older of the two accused, Naki Hasan, was her son’s father. The two brothers were remanded in judicial custody. She says it was during the DNA test that she saw the accused for the first time since she left Shahjahanpur, all those years ago. “I did not want to even look at them. Luckily, their faces were covered with gamchas,” she says.

As the trial finally began in a Shahjahanpur court, there were other problems. “Once, someone related to the brothers called me up and asked me to withdraw the case. ‘Are you still alive?’ this person said. I was then on a bus, going back to Lucknow from Shahjahanpur. I knew they could track me down. So I got off the bus and ran. And I took a longer route,” she says.

Did the son see the accused ever? “Yes, I saw his face properly for the first time during the trial. He tried talking to me… but I had nothing to do with him,” he says.

May 2024, the end of a chapter

While her younger son has just finished his BA exams, her firstborn, now a driver, has been married for three years and is a father. “My wife knows everything about my life and accepts me the way I am,” he says.

After the court verdict, which gave her rapists a 10-year term, the voices and questions in his head have finally gone quiet. He finally feels as if “kuch to sahi hua hai zindagi mein (something right has happened in our lives)”.