Not without my wife

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I miss Nayana and will do so for the rest of my life. My grief will never end — not because she is no longer with me, but because the government and the state have miserably failed to deliver justice to me and my departed wife.

Nayana was gangraped and murdered on October 7, 2009 by four persons in Pune. She was kidnapped from outside her office in a tourist vehicle and her body was found the next day in the Zarewadi forests. My struggle to bring her justice has been on since then.
Ideally one should be able to trust the authorities and not follow up the trial so religiously because the outcome is entirely in the hands of the court and the police. But I had to intervene after the prime accused escaped while being taken for a medical check-up at Sassoon Hospital last year. That was the first time I realised how little the police cares for sensitive cases like this one. They simply fail to realise that they are playing with somebody’s emotions and hopes.
The authorities claim that the constable escorting the accused was tricked, but I have my doubts. It all seems extremely fishy. Besides, till date no search report has been filed by the police. They haven’t even made any serious efforts to find him. I was already dejected by the pace at which the proceedings were going on and the escape only aggravated my depression. But then I decided to man up. I did not want to be smothered by grief and sympathy and stay in a ghetto of emotional turbulence forever. After that I addressed my first press conference. I had never known what it meant to be “quoted” and spoke to journalists like a simpleton. But the objective here was to use every platform possible to build up pressure on the police and the administration to crack the case.
My biggest blow came when the firm employing Nayana simply washed their hands off the case. I didn’t want financial support, but at least an acknowledgement of the fact that the rape took place outside their office. With great deliberation and repeated statements and interviews to the press, they came around to finally accepting their responsibility. It took 90 days for the case to stand in the court. I had made several demands to shift the trial to fast track courts and death penalty for the accused, but in vain. The government in the meantime only kept giving parroted and staple assurances like they always do. The home minister RR Patil too had given an expected and standard reply saying they are doing their best to find the absconding accused and deliver justice.
The special public prosecutor in the case too has been appointed by me. Rules state that if a public prosecutor in a murder case has been appointed by the kith or kin of the victim, he/she should bear the cost of the fees. I have duly followed this rule and have been shouldering the entire monetary burden of paying a top lawyer.
But the laid-back attitude of the police and government
was adding to my frustration, which had reached unhealthy levels. It had started taxing my health in the process but I knew that giving up at this stage would be silly and cowardly.
I believe that blaming the government and police for rising crime against women is stupid. Our society harbours all kinds of sickening orthodox ideas towards the female gender which need to change at the earliest. Most criminal acts stem from these ideas and the problem can’t be dealt with unless we uproot these beliefs and mindsets from the roots.
Even women need to be made aware about the rights that the government guarantees them. I have found women to be very ignorant about their rights. The law has a myriad of provisions protecting women from sexual violence. I am in the process of registering the Nayana Pujari Memorial Trust, which will educate women through workshops and seminars. It will acquaint them with the laws that were made to protect them in the first place.
Watching the reports of the recent Delhi rape incident on television and in the newspapers brought back all those feelings of disgust, rage and vengeance that I had experienced during Nayana’s death. After reading about the victim’s death in Singapore, I remembered the time when I had to go to identify Nayana’s body. Her mother was accompanying me and I was short of collapsing when I saw Nayana. The only thought running through my mind was the grief being experienced by the Delhi victim’s parents. The crime was not rape, but a cold-blooded murder. And the rapists deserve to be hanged.
They are not human. And from what I read in the papers, they have not even expressed remorse. Why do they need to be kept alive then?
My life started and ended with Nayana. We were childhood sweethearts and each other’s presence had defined the course of our lives. I was in denial after she died. My parents couldn’t bear to see me in anguish and pressurised me to remarry. I was unwilling, but finally accepted the suggestion. I have a five-month-old daughter from my second wife. But I salute her for accepting the fact that Nayana still lives in my heart and will always do. She religiously attends all the court proceedings for a woman, who was her husband’s first love.
I’ll confess I had contemplated suicide immediately after Nayana’s death. But it was she who told me to live on and bring peace to her soul and book the monsters who ruined our lives. I realised that I would be only betraying her by leaving the battle mid way and joining her in heaven. I wish to carry on the fight and pursue the case until it reaches its logical end — that is to punish the criminals.