Muzaffarpur, India – As protesters took to the streets of Kolkata to demand justice for a trainee physician who was raped and murdered on August 9, 55-year-old Nirali Kumari* gasped for breath in her small picket hut 480km (300 miles) away. She hadn’t left her dwelling – and even her mattress – for the reason that physique of her 14-year-old daughter was discovered on the morning of August 12 – bare, bloodied and together with her palms and legs tied.

Kumari says “six males wielding knives” entered her dwelling on the evening of August 11. “[They] threatened us and kidnapped my daughter. She was sleeping proper right here, together with her elder sister,” she provides, earlier than breaking down.

When Al Jazeera first met Kumari, she was so overwhelmed by grief that she had not eaten within the 5 days since her daughter’s physique had been found. Her wrist was bloodied and bandaged from the cannula feeding her fluids. She fainted every now and then within the suffocating warmth of her hut, at the same time as a relative waved a handheld fan over her.

Kumari’s daughter’s physique was present in a paddy subject close to her dwelling within the space of Paroo in Muzaffarpur district, Bihar, one among India’s most populous states.

The homicide of {the teenager} – who belonged to the Dalit neighborhood, the least privileged in India’s complicated caste hierarchy, a place that has enabled its persecution for hundreds of years – has put all the village on edge.

Kumari’s household lives in a village in Paroo, positioned practically 80km (50 miles) from the state capital, Patna. The village is dwelling to fewer than 5,000 folks and is surrounded by huge paddy fields. Vibrant cement homes belonging to the dominant Yadav neighborhood, an estimated 4,500 folks, sit on both facet of the potholed, date tree-lined most important street that runs by way of the village. In direction of the tip of the street, 18 grass and bamboo huts home the native Dalit neighborhood, which numbers about 80.

A historic system of feudal rule continues to be a lived actuality for hundreds of thousands of individuals in Bihar, and Paroo is not any exception. Throughout the state, Dalit households rely upon dominant caste landlords to earn a residing by engaged on their land for a day by day wage. Landowning households typically lend cash at excessive rates of interest, which may lure households in debt.

Prior to now, there have been moments of friction between the communities. Final yr, throughout Holi, the Hindu pageant of colors, Dalit youngsters crossed over to the “Yadav facet” of the village whereas enjoying with colored powders, inflicting arguments between the communities. The police needed to intervene to stop an escalation, a Dalit resident tells Al Jazeera.

The first defendant within the homicide case, Sanjay Rai, 42, belongs to the Yadav neighborhood and is an influential landlord. The boys who kidnapped the woman have been masked, however the household recognized Rai by his voice and construct. The defendant is well-known within the village.

Native media first reported that Kumari’s daughter was gang-raped and murdered after witness accounts and the household reporting the crime to the Paroo police.

Indian legislation prohibits revealing the identities of victims and their households in sexual violence instances. Nonetheless, at a information convention on August 19, the police introduced they have been ruling out rape based mostly on the findings of the postmortem report and the investigation. In addition they shared that they’d arrested Rai and 4 males from the Dalit neighborhood for homicide and conspiracy to homicide.

The woman’s killing and the authorities’ dealing with of the case have sparked stress within the village.

Dalit and human rights activists, together with some from Paroo, decry the implication of Dalit males, seeing it as the results of strain and affect from members of the dominant caste to hide the attackers’ identities and silence their neighborhood.

They see the woman’s homicide as a transparent instance of against the law inflicted by the dominant caste on the Dalit neighborhood and the case as one ensuing from systemic caste oppression.

“Dominant castes have lengthy used [violence, especially] sexual violence, as a device of oppression. They see themselves as highly effective due to their social identification,” says Manjula Pradeep, director of campaigns on the Dalit Human Rights Defenders Community (DHRDN). “Their notion will depend on the subjugation of rights of the folks from the decrease castes.”

‘Saved this household collectively’

The woman’s schoolbag lay on a picket mattress, and her college gown hung from a plastic hook on the wall. Her elder sister stared on the bag whereas their mom wailed within the room full of guests.

Kumari says her daughter was harmless and honest. “Simply one other baby,” she says.

“She was lovely like a flower but additionally a straight talker,” Kumari remembers, referring to how her daughter would converse up when she felt she wanted to. “She was the kid who stored this household collectively. From my medicines to managing our meals, she was younger however may do all of it.”

The ninth-grade pupil needed to finish her highschool training, however she typically struggled to search out time to attend college whereas serving to her dad and mom, each daily-wage labourers, by working within the rice fields and doing chores at dwelling.

Not everybody within the village knew the woman earlier than her killing. However Suraj*, a neighbour of the household who requested his identify be modified, fearing repercussions from dominant caste villagers, says Rai has a repute as “a womaniser”.

Rai had been fixated on {the teenager} and had pressured her to marry him, the sufferer’s kin inform Al Jazeera. “He supplied us a tractor and a few cash,” Kumari explains.

When the woman refused, he harassed the household on the telephone.

“I used to be scared and thought the one approach to save my daughter was to marry her off silently,” Kumari says. Regardless that the authorized age for a bride in India is eighteen, she says she had no alternative however to marry her to another person, a person in his early 20s.

{The teenager} was set to be married in a close-by village on August 19.

Kumari wailed loudly earlier than fainting once more. After a relative splashed her with water, she gasped again to consciousness and broke down.

“Does a Dalit’s life don’t have any worth? Or is that this nation just for the folks with cash?” she asks. “We would like a life for a life.”

‘Dalits are the best goal’

Sanjay Kumar, 28, navigated the huge maze of the village’s paddy fields beneath the scorching solar. As he neared the place {the teenager}’s physique was discovered, he grew distressed, talking falteringly.

He was one among two individuals who picked up the woman’s physique on August 12 within the presence of police officers. He had been working in a paddy subject when he heard the shouts and cries of the individuals who first noticed the physique.

“Everybody was terrified simply by the sight of the physique. I can’t even describe that feeling,” he remembers.

He lives about 80 metres (practically 90 yards) from the woman’s hut and was shocked when he recognised her face. Then he eliminated his gamcha, a sort of lengthy scarf, to cowl her physique.

Scratching his shaved head, Kumar says: “Her palms and legs have been tied, and she or he had grave harm marks on her scalp and decrease neck.”

These accidents have been corroborated within the postmortem report shared by police officers with Al Jazeera. As he lifted the physique, Kumar says, he was drenched in blood from the woman’s head and pelvic space. Pelvic accidents weren’t talked about within the report.

As a Dalit working as a labourer in Paroo’s paddy fields, Kumar says he has spent his life going through “exploitation” by dominant castes, however this “horrifying incident” has left him jolted.

“Dalits are the best goal for these males,” he says as his eyes properly with tears.

The information {that a} physique had been found unfold rapidly that morning. Kumari had rushed to the sphere, fearing the worst. The household was not allowed close to the woman’s physique. All they may see was her face because the police whisked her physique away.

Within the hours that adopted, family members needed to stand as much as native Yadav leaders – who they are saying pushed for a fast cremation – so they may to register a case with the police and get the investigation began.

Relations say they have been capable of halt the cremation till later that afternoon after the postmortem had been carried out.

Dashing the cremation of a reported rape and homicide sufferer may very well be an try to destroy “a very powerful proof”, Shama Sinha, a lawyer who has represented victims of sexual violence in court docket, together with Dalit ladies, tells Al Jazeera.

Rising crimes and invisibility

In accordance with a DHRDN examine, crimes in opposition to Dalits, together with homicide, rose by 177.6 % over the three many years from 1991 to 2021.

Annual knowledge from India’s Nationwide Crime Information Bureau (NCRB) exhibits there was a 50 % enhance in murders of Dalits from 651 to 975 from 2012 to 2022, the most recent yr for which knowledge are accessible. Bihar has been the second most affected state.

The Indian authorities doesn’t keep separate knowledge for crimes in opposition to Dalit ladies and women similar to homicide, gang rape and rape with homicide. Nonetheless, NCRB knowledge present a 169 % enhance in reported rapes of Dalit ladies nationally from 2012 (when there have been 1,576 instances) to 2022 (when there have been 4,241 instances). A mean of 10 Dalit ladies and women are reported raped each day.

Pradeep of the DHRDN, a lawyer with greater than 30 years of expertise navigating instances of violence in opposition to ladies, believes the rise in reported rape partly displays the rising social mobility of Dalit ladies.

“The subcastes inside Dalits who’ve been capable of climb the financial ladder and assert their rights are additionally more and more capable of register a grievance,” she says. Even then, she says, the numbers are a “huge undercount”.

Dalit households’ financial reliance on landlords “prevents loads of complaints”, Pradeep says.

She says crimes in opposition to Dalits are sometimes rendered “invisible” because of the neighborhood’s deprived social standing.

Sinha, who has spent greater than twenty years travelling throughout rural Bihar to run camps to lift consciousness about authorized rights, agrees.

Concern of retribution is a significant factor in low reporting of crimes, she says, “as a result of the subsequent day, these households nonetheless need to reside in the identical village and face the identical social dynamics”.

For Dalit ladies who expertise gender discrimination on high of the financial and caste prejudice endured by Dalits, reporting is a good better problem.

“The literacy fee is low – 57 % for Dalit ladies – and although there are robust legal guidelines in place, there isn’t any consciousness and extra importantly no company for [Dalit] ladies to report [cases] and search justice,” Sinha says. “Wives nonetheless name husbands ‘maalik’,” which is Hindi for “proprietor”.

This disparity or invisibility extends to illustration in media, Pradeep says. “Dalits don’t get the identical type of reporting from the media, which may allow social mobilisation.”

The rape and homicide of the 31-year-old trainee physician in Kolkata, a significant metropolis in japanese India, prompted nationwide protests and outrage with medical employees in a number of components of the nation, together with Bihar, strolling out of hospitals in protest.

There was far much less outrage over the homicide of the schoolgirl in Paroo though Dalit and ladies’s rights activists organised protest marches in Bihar.

“Dalit households are left on their lonesome in these instances,” Pradeep factors out.

A playbook

On August 19, Rakesh Kumar, the Muzaffarpur district police chief, stated on the information convention that police had arrested Rai that morning from a close-by village in addition to the 4 Dalit males.

Kumar stated the sufferer was not kidnapped however went willingly to fulfill Rai close to her dwelling after they have been attacked by the 4 males who needed to punish them for having an intercaste relationship.

He stated the lads then fled and, panicked, Rai then killed the woman, tied her limbs collectively and left her physique within the fields.

“It [the police version] needs to be essentially the most absurd rationalization behind the case that reeks with a odor of a cover-up,” says Kumari, a neighborhood social activist, who spent per week within the village on a fact-finding mission and requested to be recognized solely by her second identify. “That is straight out of a playbook the place all the equipment is rigged in opposition to the neighborhood.

“I’m not shocked in any respect to search out Dalit males being arrested on this case. That’s what principally occurs in our expertise. I’d not even be shocked if tomorrow the police implicated one of many relations too in the event that they increase their voice.”

Consultants additionally say rape shouldn’t be dominated out.

In court docket, a spread of proof comes into play in sexual violence instances, Sinha says, and “the indicators of rape are tougher to catch in medical stories with passing time.”

“Spermatozoa not discovered” – which is what the report says – can by no means be grounds to dismiss rape, she says.

Sinha provides that police investigations typically undergo from improper assortment of time-sensitive proof and a scarcity of coaching of police personnel in investigating instances of sexual violence.

Shreya Rastogi, director of forensics at Challenge 39A, a New Delhi-based analysis group, says assuming the forensic report is appropriate, the absence of sperm doesn’t disprove rape.

She says sperm cells degrade, there might not have been ejaculation and the take a look at may have been achieved improperly but additionally the absence of sperm cells “means actually nothing as a result of so many situations may have occurred whereas there should have been penetration. … Ruling out rape is totally improper.”

She continues: “Each legally and medically talking, ruling out rape simply on the idea of absence of sperm is just not legitimate or dependable.”

Al Jazeera tried to succeed in Rai in addition to his household, who left the village earlier than Rai’s arrest. The main points of Rai’s authorized counsel will not be recognized.

‘Handled like criminals’

Again at Nirali Kumari’s dwelling, a gaggle of native Yadav leaders got here to fulfill the household on August 17 whereas Al Jazeera was visiting.

She tried to remain acutely aware for the guests, who got chairs to sit down on.

“We should always not politicise this challenge. One particular person’s doing doesn’t symbolize the Yadav neighborhood at massive,” Tulsi Rai, 43, a neighborhood Yadav chief who came over the household, tells Al Jazeera.

If somebody from the Dalit neighborhood informed him that they have been being intimidated by a Yadav household, “we are going to scare these Yadavs again,” Rai says. “A grimy particular person like Sanjay doesn’t belong to our neighborhood. Now we have disowned him.”

However quickly, teenage boys and males appeared outdoors the household’s dwelling carrying blue scarves, synonymous with Dalit politics. They interrupted their phrases of sympathy and known as for accountability.

“Now we have misplaced our daughter, however I don’t belief the police and the administration for justice and our security,” Nirali Kumari says. “We solely think about brothers of our caste throughout India to assist us get justice now.”

Dalit activists held small protests in Paroo, which stirred concern amongst Dalit households of a backlash from the dominant caste. Then, on the night of August 18, the Kumari household was pressured to flee the village.

Nirali Kumari says they left behind an unlocked dwelling and all their belongings – together with a “hard-earned” bicycle, clothes and meals – and “ran for our lives” when, the household says, dominant caste members wielding weapons began ransacking Dalit properties.

“Should you survive – come again sometime to gather your belongings,” a neighbour informed Nirali.

The entire Dalit households have since fled the village, and their 18 huts are actually abandoned.

Muzaffarpur police inform Al Jazeera that the investigation is ongoing and a cost sheet has but to be issued. They didn’t touch upon the Dalit residents fleeing Paroo.

On September 4, Al Jazeera met Nirali Kumari’s household in hiding practically 100km (62 miles) from their dwelling at a location that isn’t being disclosed for its security.

Fifteen relations have been sheltering in a small, white-walled room. A devastated Nirali was sitting in a nook.

The household continues to be on the transfer. “We’re a poor household, and now we’ve no roof over our heads. My coronary heart is sinking,” she says, beating her chest in anger. “I want I used to be killed reasonably than my babu. This life is nugatory.

“We’re being handled like criminals. My daughter was raped and murdered – however who cares about giving justice to a poor Dalit like me? However we’re not the final Dalits on this nation, and this story will carry on repeating.”

*Names have been modified