Asifa’s father says daughter killed to send message

8-year-old’s attackers hit her twice on the head with a stone

She was an 8-year-old girl who, while grazing her horses in a meadow in Northern India in January, followed a man into the forest. Days later, Asifa Bano’s small, lifeless body was recovered there.

Police say that Asifa was given sedatives and, for three days, raped several times by different men. Asifa was eventually strangled on January 17, something police say would have happened sooner had one man not insisted on waiting, so that he could rape her a final time.

To ensure she was dead, Asifa’s killers hit her twice on the head with a stone, according to charging documents filed by police in the state of Jammu and Kashmir and published by the Indian news website Firstpost. In the months since, Asifa’s death has brought anguish to Kathua, the small town where she was killed. But it’s also brought division. Asifa’s case is the latest example of India’s religious friction: As some denounce sexual violence and demand justice for Asifa’s family, others demand justice for the men accused.

Lawyers try to stop police

The eight men accused of raping and killing Asifa are Hindu. Asifa was a Muslim nomad, part of the Bakarwal tribe. Asifa’s father, Mohammad Yousuf Pujwala, told the New York Times that he believes his daughter was killed by the Hindu men for the sole purpose of driving her people away.

To add to the volatility of Asifa’s case, police say she was killed in a Hindu temple, and that the temple’s custodian plotted her death as a way to torment the Bakarwals.

Asifa was the pawn. “A child of only 8 years of age who ... became a soft target,” police said.

On Monday, a chaotic scene unfolded outside a courthouse in Jammu and Kashmir, as a mob of Hindu attorneys tried to physically stop police from filing charges against the men accused. The attorneys in a statement argued for a federal investigation, stating that the government had failed to “understand

Asifa was a Muslim nomad, part of the Bakarwal tribe. Asifa’s father, Mohammad Yousuf Pujwala, told the New York Times he believes his daughter was killed by the Hindu men for the sole purpose of driving her people away.

the sentiments of the people.” Police still managed to complete the paperwork and charged the men, who include four policemen and a retired government official.

‘We will burn ourselves’

Protests have now spread across much of Kathua. Hindu activists argue that some of the police officers who worked on the case are, like Asifa, Muslims — and cannot be trusted, according to the Times. Dozens of Hindu women have helped block a highway and organise a hunger strike.

“They are against our religion,” Bimla Devi, a protester, told the New York Times. She said that if the accused men weren’t freed, “we will burn ourselves.”

The lawyers, along with a group affiliated with India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, fight on the basis of religious prejudice, even though BJP supporters are vocal opponents of sexual violence. After the brutal gang rape and murder of a medical student in New Delhi in 2012, the government promised to introduce legal reforms and support services to help victims of sexual violence. To an extent, it did — for example, the government amended the law to prosecute children older than 16 as adults in rape and murder cases. (Not much more has changed for rape victims, however, according to a November report by Human Rights Watch).

Notable BJP members have asked the case be moved out of the state police’s jurisdiction and into that of the Central Bureau of Investigation, claiming the agency would act neutrally. The bureau, however, reports to the BJP-led government in New Delhi.