The documentary film India’s Daughter has caused fresh ripples this week with news that two defence lawyers who appear in it face investigation by the Bar Council of India after appearing to justify violence.
Their remarks appeared to be a “clear case of professional misconduct”, Manan Mishra, chairman of the Bar Council, is reported to have said.
The move is the latest controversy to hit the one-hour film, which has been banned by the Indian government but which — despite threats of an injunction — has now been screened by the BBC and also at a special event held by Doughty Street Chambers last week, together with the charity Plan UK.
It depicts the brutal gang rape and murder of a physiotherapy intern, Jyoti Singh, 23, on a bus in Delhi after an evening out with her boyfriend in 2012 — a crime that provoked widespread outrage and protests.
The film was made by Leslee Udwin, the award-winning film director whose films include East is East and its sequel, West is West, in what was her first documentary.
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She told a panel discussion after the Doughty Street screening that the mass response to the crime had prompted her to make the film. “That was what so impressed me, so moved me. I had never seen any other country stand up with such fortitude for the rights of women. I thought: if these people can stand out there, so bravely, crying — enough is enough, the best I could to was to amplify these issues with a film.”
The ban, she added, had been a complete surprise. “My whole purposes was to give a gift of gratitude to India, to praise India, to single India out as a country that was exemplary, as a country where I could see change was beginning.”
The Indian government argues that the film has given a platform to Mukesh Singh, one of the rapists who was interviewed in prison, and is also an affront to the dignity of women.
Some women, too, are against its being shown: Dr Maria Misra, an academic at the University of Oxford and specialist on the history of India, said some felt it was “shaming and dishonouring” the name of Jyoti again and dragging her through the mud. This atititude that the [rape] victim has been dishonoured and “the best thing is to cover it up” is still a problem, she said.
The film gives a graphic account of what happened to the woman. The surgeons who tried to operate in the days before she died of massive internal injuries said that they did not know where to begin, such was extent of damage to her organs.
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She and her boyfriend, who had been beaten up, were thrown off the bus and finally discovered at the wayside where some people had chosen to turn a blind eye — in their view — to just another rape.
One of the lawyers, defence Manohar Lal Sharma, who acted for Mukesh Singh, one of the defendants convicted of the crimes, said: “in our culture, there is no place for a woman”. Another, AK Singh, said if he found his daughter indulging in “premarital activities” he would set her on fire.
Alistair MacDonald, QC, chairman of the Bar, told the Doughty Street discussion, chaired by Kirsty Brimelow, QC, that such comments were unimaginable in the UK — where there was “an understanding not to bring the profession into disrepute”.
Nor were they the only shocking statements in the film. Singh, who with the other defendants is in jail awaiting an appeal, expressed no remorse and blamed the girl for being out at night (it was about 9pm) and for resisting the rape. “A girl is far more responsible for a rape than a boy,” he said. Had she not resisted, she would still be alive, he said.
One of the defendants was the driver of the bus and the view taken was that he was allowed to enforce morality, to teach the couple a lesson: the girl and her boyfriend, the only other passengers, were kissing at the back. The defendants’ attitude was one of bewilderment that when rape is so commonplace, they should have been prosecuted at all. A prison psychiatrist says in the film that he knows of men who have committed 200 rapes.
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The defendants come from impoverished backgrounds, in sharp contrast to the loving backgrounds of Jyoti’s parents — unusually, they celebrated her birth just as much as families would normally do for a boy. They describe their unbearable loss quietly, with with dignity: Badri Singh, her father, recalls that she had only six months left of her internship: “Happiness was a few steps ahead.”
The adult defendants (one of the six was a juvenile) have been sentenced to hang and wait their appeal. If they hang, however, as one participant said, that will simply mask the wider societal problems of sexual violence — giving an impression “that the men are just rotten apples in a barrel when the reality is that the whole barrel is rotten”.
Meanwhile, the best move towards demonstrating that the change Udwin believes is coming would be if the Indian prime minister were to lift the ban.