BAREILLY: For two years, she was gang-raped in the house she lived in by two brothers the family knew. She was 12 then. When she got pregnant a year later, her family found out but she had to give up the baby. Now, she has been reunited with her son and it was he who convinced her to seek justice. Twenty-six years on, an FIR has been filed and the men who violated her have been booked.
“It was 1994. I lived in Shahjahanpur with my sister. She taught at a private school and my brother-inlaw was a government employee,” the rape survivor told TOI. Then one day, two acquaintances of the family dropped in. “Naki Hasan and his brother Guddu. They raped me and, when I tried to resist, threatened to kill me. For two years, they gang-raped me repeatedly.”

In 1995, I got pregnant and I told my sister everything. The brothers threatened to kill her if she tried to file a complaint ,” the woman, now 38, said. “We tried to get an abortion but the doctor refused since I was 13 and it would be risky.” Her brother-in-law got transferred and they left the town.
In the new town, she gave birth to a boy and gave him up for adoption to distant relatives in Hardoi. In 2000, she got married but six years later when her husband found out she had been raped, he called her conduct into question and abandoned her.
She never got to meet her son. Some years ago, the son found out he had been adopted and who his mother was, the FIR said. When they met last year, he asked who his father was. “I refused at first but he threatened to kill himself. I gave in.” Her son, now 24, was supportive and certain that she should not give up the fight. She said the first time she tried to register a complaint, the police would not. This week, the court of the chief judicial magistrate ordered them to file an FIR.