Pratima’s story is not an ordinary case of family abuse. It tells us a lot about the nature of the Indian state and how it has come to be dominated by criminal elements at all levels. The corrupt and the venal amongst our power wielders regularly use their leverage with the state machinery to benefit their kith and kin and crush with brute force any attempt to challenge their power. However, in Pratima’s case, her father let loose a reign of terror against her and her marital family with the active support of every possible arm of the state machinery.

In her years long battle, Pratima knocked on every possible door. Even at the risk of her life, she wrote petitions to senior-most police officers of Uttar Pradesh, to the Chief Minister as well as to the Home Secretary. She also approached the State Women’s Commission, the National Human Rights Commission and the National Women’s Commission. Each of these institutions failed to come to her rescue. But she never gave up battling.

It was through Zee TV, whose reporter Sanjay Chandra covered her case that she came into contact with Madhu Kishwar in September 2006. Since then Manushi has taken up her case with the UP government and also by providing her free legal aid through Manushi lawyer friends.

We find it very impressive that Pratima does not overstate or exaggerate her predicament. Even when she is close to a point of break down, she speaks in a measured way and retains her dignity. That is one reason why helping her in her fight for justice has been a very inspiring experience. Despite having gone through hell, she has not allowed her own humanity to be damaged.

We are providing our readers a detailed account of Pratima’s life so that you may join us in mobilizing support for her.

It has been a matter of great anguish for her that all these years, she is the one who was expected to hide her face from society and feel ashamed, while her father went around brazenly without any sense of shame or remorse. Even newspapers and TV channels, which covered her story, had to hide her identity by changing her name and covering her face. It is an act of great courage on her part that she has chosen to speak to Manushi in her own name and allowed us to use her unveiled pictures.

The following account is based on tape-recorded as well as several oral interviews with Pratima and several hours of conversation with her husband, along with a review of their case papers.

Twenty-five-year-old Pratima Singh is the daughter of Virendra Kumar Dohare who is currently posted as the Sub Divisional Magistrate (SDM) in Mahoba District of Uttar Pradesh. She says, “My childhood was very different from that of ordinary children because I did not receive any parental love. My father comes from a very poor Schedule Caste (Chamar) family. He was married off while still in his teens to my mother who is from a still poorer family. Because of her poor background, illiteracy and lack of good looks, he never really accepted her. As he carried on with his studies and then got himself a government job, his disdain for my mother kept increasing. He had affairs with several women and wanted to marry someone else. Therefore, he used all kinds of tactics against my mother, including allegations of sexual infidelity, to get rid of her. For example he disowned me while I was still in my mother’s womb, alleging that this pregnancy was due to my mother’s affair with his own father.

“My paternal grandfather was a Class IV employee with the Indian Railways who did manual work on the railway line as a gangman. He was poor and had received no education at all. My father therefore had very little respect for his own father and spared no opportunity to insult and humiliate him. His allegation that his own father had fathered me was perhaps due to this contempt.

“Though I was the first daughter in three generations in my father’s family, he used my birth to abandon my mother. The main reason for my father’s aversion to having a daughter was because he thought that having a daughter would make him subordinate to whichever family she married into. He was very proud of the fact that for three generations their family has never had to bow before any other family. Consequently, she had to spend several years in her own parental home in Satahari village. My maternal grandfather was extremely poor and my mother spent those years in grinding poverty. She had only one sari, a blouse and a petticoat—not even spare garments to change into when she bathed. I grew up on dry bajra rotis.

“Even though my mother did not maltreat me, she gave far more importance to my brothers since her position was elevated in the family because of them. While my mother was living in her parental village, my grandfather, uncles, and others made several attempts to take back my elder brother because they wanted a son of the family with them. My mother firmly refused to let go of her son and insisted that either all three of us go back or none. Finally, due to the collective pressure of her community elders, including one of his uncles who later became my father-in-law, my father was persuaded to take back my mother. But he never forgave my father-in-law for having exercised his influence to make him accept his wife nor, for that matter, his own father for having taken my mother’s side.