From: jantia@uceng.uc.edu (Jimmy Antia)
Subject: surat atrocities
Organization: University of Cincinnati
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 20:00:10 GMT


	GRUESOME TALES BY SURAT WOMEN

    From the Times of India, Dec.22, 1992.
	Reproduced without permission

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The Times of India News Service

SURAT, December 21

	A 19-year old girl who was gang-raped and     
tonsured is convalescing in the Surat civil hospital.
	She is one of the victims who was pulled out
from the ill-fated Bhusaval-bound train on December 10.
Her brother who was accompanying her to Dhulia was
stabbed and burnt alive in front of her.
	A 20-year old married recently to a religious
leader and came from Assam to Surat was also gang-raped.
Her husband was slaughtered in front of her. She is now
struggling for life at the Sarvajanik Hospital here,
following an acid attack. 
	Another victim, in her early twenties and the
sister of a Surat police officer, also met with a 
similar fate on the night of December 7 on Varachha Road.
	Tragedy has struck Surat women with a vengeance.
And for them, it was hell let loose. These are some of the
gruesome cases that have come to light. How many women have
been gang-raped is now known but tales which some of the 
women relate at different relief camps are shocking.
	Vijaynagar-II, Vishramnagar, Tunkinagar, J.P.Nagar,
Sandasnagar, adjoining areas of Dawal Shah Peer Dargah on
Ved Road are the societies where the women were subjected to
such barbaric acts. The night of December 8 would go down
as the darkest night the residents ever saw in their lives.
	With no police at all to stop the frenzied mobs, a
grisly drama of murder, loot, rape and sadism at its worst
were enacted. While men were thrown into bonfires, torched
alive or had burning tyres put around their necks, women
were stripped of all their clothes and ordered to "run till
they can run". 
	As the naked women ran for their lives with shivering
and shuddering children clinging to them, the ancient system
of tripping horses was applied. Sticks and ropes were used as
hurdles, so that several of them tripped and fell down
becoming easy prey for those hoodlums.
	A visit to the Marjaan Shaani Hall where about 1,529
terror-stricken people are taking shelter is a tragic sight.
Many of the survivors have gory tales to tell. But what is most
shocking; is that the killers video recorded the incidents. 
Why did they bring the video camera along with them and what
was their intention in recording their inhuman acts on tape
defies explanation because if the tape falls in the hands of
the police, it may become a vital piece of evidence against
the same killers.
	Many in the camp have now mustered the courage to
identify by name some of the hoodlums who led the mobs.
	Yet another unfortunate women who is also taking
shelter in the same camp has become a widow at 22 after her
husband was butchered. A fifth victim recalls that she had
just prepared food for the family when her husband called 
from the stairs that he would just go down and ask the
children to come upstairs, as the situation was very tense.
He went down never to return. Later as the family fled the
home following another attack, his father was hacked to
death, and his three-year-old grandson suffered sword
injuries on the head.
	Perhaps the plight of Jamilabanu, who is several
months pregnant is the most tragic of all. Having seen her
husband and three children being slaughtered in front of
her own eyes and their bodies being hurled into a bonfire,
she had lost her mental balance. She was amongst the
several women who were brought to the camp totally naked, 
thanks to the help from a local leader. Lying in one of
the corners of the camp office, she has not opened her
eyes since the last five days.
	The same story is narrated in the other camps. Not
a tear has so far been shed by a young boy who saw his
mother and young sister being gang-raped and later torched
to death. He is among the 600 persons taking shelter at
the Surat Lala camp house in the Saiyad Pura area of the
city.
	"I just pretended I was dead," another riot victim
narrated. She along with her brother and sister-in-law were
proceeding towards their native Dhulia on Thursday last by
the ill-fated Surat-Bhusaval train when the killers struck.
She was gang-raped, beaten hollow by sticks, set on fire
and thrown on the rail track.
	A couple of policemen who spotted her on the track
covered her body and rushed her to the Surat civil hospital.
Her sister-in-law who was carrying a 10-month old son with
her was spared by the mob.
	Mny of the young girls in the affected areas are
still missing. whether they are alive or not and in what
condition, no one knows.
	For the time being, the ball is in the court of the
police, at least to seize the video cassette which has the
gruesome incidents on the tape. The scars that these women
have suffered will take years to heal and many of them are
not sure as to where to return when the situation becomes
"normal".

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such barbaric acts. 
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