JUSTICE FOR WOMEN IN PAKISTAN AND INDIA 2016
Compiled by Lucy Warner, July 30, 2016


As unjust as I find some things in this country, unfortunately there are other places which are much, much worse than we have here. In Pakistan, the murdered woman "crossed a line" in her thinking and behavior. She got too liberal. In India, the Dalit, lower caste, woman went outdoors after dark to use a toilet. In her upper caste rapist's trial it was judged that her going outside after dark was obviously "consent." See the articles below. Good female behavior in both these countries is so difficult to achieve that any woman may find herself being "punished" in unspeakable ways. See the articles below.



PAKISTAN


http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/07/27/487467370/in-pakistans-heartland-a-perfect-storm-of-obstacles-to-protecting-women

In Pakistan's Heartland, A 'Perfect Storm Of Obstacles' To Protecting Women
PHILIP REEVES
July 27, 201611:20 AM ET

Photograph -- Mukhtar Mai advocates against honor killings and runs a women's shelter and a school for girls in southern Punjab. In 2002, Mai was gang-raped as punishment when her 12-year-old brother was accused of dishonoring another family. Philip Reeves/NPR


The home in which Pakistan's social media celebrity Qandeel Baloch was strangled to death by her brother has none of the wicked glamour that was her hallmark within her make-believe cyber-world.

She died in a small concrete house, a $100-a-month rental at the end of a cobbled alley inside a half-built housing estate, not far from the central city of Multan. Goats, chickens, street hawkers and kids wander around amid puddles of mud — it is monsoon season — and oceans of trash.

Pakistani social media celebrity Qandeel Baloch arrives for a press conference last month in Lahore, Pakistan.
THE TWO-WAY
Pakistani Social Media Star Strangled In Apparent 'Honor' Killing
Friends and family carry Pakistani social media celebrity Qandeel Baloch's body at her funeral.
GOATS AND SODA
'Honor Killings' Are A Global Problem — And Often Invisible
The location of Baloch's death on July 15 seems irrelevant when you consider the magnitude of the underlying issues that caused her to become another entry in a constantly growing list of Pakistani women slaughtered in the name of an obscurantist concept of "honor."

Yet place matters greatly in Baloch's story.

She came from the southern part of Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province. The same arcane system of beliefs governs life in large areas of South Asia but it is particularly strong in south Punjab, where the legal system is routinely superseded by age-old feudal traditions. Resistance to change is particularly stubborn there.

'She Crossed The Line'

Men shelter from the heat in a village in south Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province.i
Men shelter from the heat in a village in south Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province.
Philip Reeves/NPR
On the map, south Punjab is in the middle of Pakistan. It is a sweep of flat land, traversed by canals and two of South Asia's great rivers, the Indus and Chenab, feeding an overwhelmingly rural landscape crowded with mango trees, date palms, sugar cane, cotton fields, cattle, camels, Sufi shrines and mud-brick villages.

The towns are chaotic and poor. Many women wear burqas; almost all cover their heads. The faces on display on advertising billboards are nearly all male — mustachioed politicians seeking to bolster their profiles or musclemen promoting the joys of the local gym by posing bare-chested.

Map of Pakistan
Credit: Alyson Hurt/NPR
Qandeel Baloch — whose real name was Fauzia Azeem — was murdered while she was staying with her family. She had been working in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, but was back home to celebrate Eid, the Islamic festival that follows the month-long Ramadan fast. She was 26.

The day after her murder, police produced her unrepentant younger brother, Muhammad Waseem, at a press conference. Waseem calmly explained that he had drugged Baloch before throttling her.

Qandeel Baloch, a Pakistani social media celebrity shown here at a June 28 press conference in Lahore, was murdered by her brother in an honor killing on July 15.i
Qandeel Baloch, a Pakistani social media celebrity shown here at a June 28 press conference in Lahore, was murdered by her brother in an honor killing on July 15.
STR/AFP/Getty Images
Asked why he killed her, he said her internet postings dishonored the family. He was also unhappy about a video shot by Baloch in which she appeared alongside a prominent Islamic cleric, cheekily wearing his hat. It went viral.

Waseem's decision to murder his sister caused outrage in cyberspace and was widely condemned internationally. However, there is no doubt that most of the men from the world into which Baloch was born take a different view.

Shabbir Ahmed, 60, is among a crowd of men sheltering from the intense midday heat beneath the awnings of an outdoor tea-shop in a farming village called Basti Thaar Khan.

"We think that Qandeel's murder is justified," says Ahmed, a landowner with 20 acres. "The point is we are Muslims. There is a limit to everything. She was liberal-minded and crossed the line."

Muhammad Azeem, Qandeel Baloch's father, sits in an ambulance carrying the body of his daughter on July 17. He has called for his son to be punished for committing the murder.i
Muhammad Azeem, Qandeel Baloch's father, sits in an ambulance carrying the body of his daughter on July 17. He has called for his son to be punished for committing the murder.
SS MIRZA/AFP/Getty Images
Ghulam Haider, a woodcutter, chimes in: "Everyone here agrees with that." The men around him nod approvingly.

In life, Baloch cast herself as a "one-woman army," a "provocateur" fighting to emancipate women in a repressive society that simultaneously condemned her sensuous videos and selfies while watching them in large numbers. She amassed more than 750,000 Facebook followers and 70,000-plus on Instagram, and her YouTube videos each attracted tens of thousands of views.

In death, Pakistan's progressive minority mourned her and, in a few cases, hailed her as a feminist hero. But many, many Pakistanis did not.

A Voice For Justice

The campaign to end the hundreds of so-called "honor killings" that happen in Pakistan every year has no more prominent voice than Mukhtar Mai. She lives in the village of Meerwala, about 55 miles from where Baloch was killed, where she runs a women's shelter and a school for girls.

In 2002, Mai was gang-raped on the orders of a jirga — an unelected council of local male elders — and then paraded semi-clothed, all as a punishment because her 12-year-old brother was accused of dishonoring a powerful local family.

Mukhtar Mai has fought for justice for the past 14 years. Pakistan's Supreme Court has said it will review its own 2011 decision to uphold the acquittal of five of her attackers.i
Mukhtar Mai has fought for justice for the past 14 years. Pakistan's Supreme Court has said it will review its own 2011 decision to uphold the acquittal of five of her attackers.
Philip Reeves/NPR
Ordinarily in such cases, the victim goes away in shame and silence and may even commit suicide. But with the support of her family, Mai, now in her mid-40s, fought back, filed charges and brought her case to the courts.

Her campaign for justice won her international recognition and many awards, including being named Glamour magazine's woman of the year. But 14 years later, her case is still going through Pakistan's justice system. Only one of her 14 attackers has been convicted. In a rare move, the Supreme Court is reviewing its 2011 decision to uphold the acquittal of five others.

Men in south Punjab "consider women their property, and treat them like the slippers on their feet," Mai says.

As for Qandeel Baloch, "Some people say she was doing everything to get popularity," Mai says. "Even if she was, that's her personal matter. Nobody had the right to kill her."

As news of Baloch's murder zinged around the world. Pakistan's ruling party declared that a proposed law on honor killings that has languished in Parliament for two years is now expected to pass "within weeks."

The bill closes a legal loophole allowing "honor" killers to escape punishment if the victims' families — who are often involved in the crimes — forgive them.

Rights activists welcomed the announcement. Yet there are huge doubts over whether it will make any difference.

The Limits Of Laws

In Pakistan, laws are routinely made and ignored. The legal system is severely overloaded, extremely slow and can be subverted by intimidation or corruption. Communities often resort to informal, parallel systems of justice, especially in rural areas.

Ghulam Haider, the woodcutter in the village of Basti Thaar Khan, says his granddaughter was raped several years ago; he is still waiting for the case to get to court. He's abandoned hope, saying he now wants the issue settled by a jirga.

"I will definitely go to a jirga because the court does not deliver," he says. The family needs a verdict, he says, because they intend to marry off his granddaughter.

Tribal jirgas in south Punjab implement traditional codes regulating inheritance, sexual relations, land disputes and more. Much is settled by negotiation. But they can hand down horrifying punishments, including executing women or giving them away as compensation.

Trash is scattered in the alley leading to the house on the outskirts of Multan where Qandeel Baloch was murdered.i
Trash is scattered in the alley leading to the house on the outskirts of Multan where Qandeel Baloch was murdered.
Philip Reeves/NPR
This system is unrelated to Islam and its shariah law; it is built on a notion of kinship and collective honor.

In much of Pakistani society, families by tradition have sovereign rights over their members, says Anatol Lieven, author of Pakistan: A Hard Country.

"In extreme cases — especially those involving so-called female 'honor' — these rights include the right to impose death sentences. State law is held to have no role in these matters," he says. "So far, the state has been too weak to stamp out these practices, especially because many of its own local police have the same culture."

In fact, says Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center, "When it comes to laws against honor killings and other policies meant to protect women, you run into a perfect storm of obstacles" — including the fact that those targeted by such policies "have powerful connections and can easily escape prosecution."

'Feudals Are The Government Here'

Mukhtar Mai is deeply skeptical about the government's new proposed law.

"I do not believe one iota of what they say," she says, "They often say they've made a new law on this or on that. But this is just for the books. They're not actually implemented."

Mai says that in her area, "feudal lords" — big, ancestral landowners with a reputation for treating their laborers and other locals and dependents as property — lie at the root of the problem. They enjoy immense power, consolidated by a network of close relatives in Parliament and other key institutions and reinforced by their own armed men.

"Feudals are the government here," she says.

Mai believes that even if the state-run legal system functioned properly, a new law would bring little relief to the victims of honor-related crimes, as the feudal lords control the local police who collate evidence and have a record of siding with the abusers.

For her, education is the key to changing social attitudes and ending honor crimes against women. This was Mai's goal when she set up a girls' school in 2003. After starting out with just three pupils, her organization now has 1,300 students on the books.

Yet most schools in the area are in disarray and illiteracy rates are very high. Most landowners don't wish to educate the population, she says, "because if people are educated, they will challenge them."

Feudal traditions govern much of life in the towns and villages of south Punjab.
Philip Reeves/NPR

Some landowners have even taken over local schools for use as cattle sheds, she says.

'What Can The Government Do?'

When Qandeel Baloch was murdered, the alarm was raised by a woman called Saba Munir. She lives in the same alley, in the house opposite.

Munir rarely leaves her home; when she does so, she wears a burqa. She speaks with NPR through a grill in her window so that she cannot be seen.

At around 9:45 a.m. on July 16, Baloch's mother arrived in obvious distress and told her what had happened.

Anwar Bibi, Qandeel Baloch's mother, mourns alongside her daughter's body during her funeral in Punjab's Shah Sadar Din village on July 17. SS MIRZA/AFP/Getty Images

"The father was sitting there, bursting into tears," Munir says. "I phoned a local boy and sent him with the father to fetch the police."

Munir didn't know that Qandeel Baloch was a celebrity (she's been waiting for weeks for the cable guy to install her TV), but she saw her in the street from time to time, dressed "like a college girl."

"She seemed happy," says Munir.

She wants Waseem, who's admitted proudly to killing his sister, to be jailed for life for the murder. One particularly disrespectful remark Waseem made at his confessional press conference irks her.

He was asked for his mother's name, and casually replied that he did not know it.

"How is it possible that a child given birth by his mother, brought up in her lap, does not know her name?" she says.

From behind her grilled window, Munir says she really wants to see an end to the honor-related violence against Pakistan's women, which has been going on for centuries. Yet she, too, doubts the government can achieve this.

"The laws followed by our families and castes do not allow information to be given to government," she says. "People sort out matters in jirgas and cover things up. What can the government do?"

Certainly, something needs to be done.

Violent crimes are monitored by Pakistan's Human Rights Commission. It says that since Baloch's murder — just 12 days ago — three more women have also been murdered in the name of honor.




INDIA’S RAPE PROBLEM


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/israeli-tourist-25-gang-raped-northern-india-police/

Israeli tourist, 25, gang-raped in northern India, police say
CBS/AP
July 25, 2016, 1:52 PM

16 Photos -- Indian social activists shout slogans following the judgment in the Kamduni rape and murder case, in Kolkata, India, on January 29, 2016. DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
16 PHOTOS -- Gang rape sparks rage in India


NEW DELHI - Police were questioning two men Monday in the gang rape of a 25-year-old Israeli tourist who accepted a car ride while traveling in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.

The woman, who had been looking for a taxi, got into the car in the hill resort of Manali before dawn Sunday to travel to a nearby town, said Padam Chand, a police superintendent in Manali.

There were six men in the car and two of them raped the tourist after stopping at a desolate spot, he said.

Two of the men were in police custody and a search was on for the other four. Chand said the men would be arrested if police found evidence that they were the ones involved in the gang rape.

"Arresting the four men who are absconding is our topmost priority. We have alerted police in all nearby districts," Chand told reporters late Monday.

Five of the men are Indian and the sixth is Nepali, he said. All are in their early 20s, Chand said, adding that police had impounded the car used in the assault.

Manali police were in touch with officials at the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi and were keeping them informed about the progress in the investigation.

The picturesque hill resorts of Himachal Pradesh are very popular with young Israelis who travel in India after their military service, despite concerns about the safety of women.

Tourism in India has taken a hit after several sexual assault incidents involving tourists came to light.

In 2012, an Australian tourist was raped in Kullu valley, also in Himachal Pradesh. The next year, an American woman was gang-raped by three men in Manali when she took a ride with them in a truck.

Reports of rapes of women highlight the persistence of such violence in India despite a public outcry following the fatal gang rape of a young woman in moving bus in New Delhi in 2012.

Public fury over that case led to more stringent laws that doubled prison terms for rape to 20 years and criminalized voyeurism and stalking. But many women say daily indignities and abuse continue unabated and that the new laws have not made the streets any safer.

Recently, a 20-year-old Indian college student said she was gang-raped again by the five men who raped her three years ago.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/indian-dalit-girl-raped-twice-same-5-men/

Indian girl says she was raped by same 5 men 3 years apart
By ARSHAD R ZARGAR CBS NEWS
July 19, 2016, 3:50 PM

16 photos -- A group of protesters shout slogans demanding death sentence to a juvenile accused of rape, outside the Juvenile justice board in New Delhi, India, Saturday, Aug. 31, 2013. The country has been struggling to get a grip on what many see as a sexual assault crisis in recent years. AP


Haryana, India -- A 20-year-old Indian college student has allegedly been gang raped again by the five men who raped her three years ago.

"I was leaving college when I saw them. They were the same five men. They forced me into the car and tried to strangulate me. They said they would kill my father and brother. I don't know where they took me," the woman told an Indian TV channel.

The five men left her seriously injured in the bushes. A passerby saw her and informed the police, after which she was taken to a hospital.

The incident happened in Rohtak town of Indian state of Haryana on July 13. A week on, the girl is still under treatment in a hospital.

Haryana Police have arrested three of the five accused so far. They will be produced in court today.

"One more who has been named will be arrested soon. Address of the fifth accused is not clear. As soon as we ascertain his address, we will arrest him," Haryana Police chief KP Singh told the press on Tuesday.

The girl from a low-caste Dalit family was first raped by the same men in the nearby town of Bhiwani in 2013. Police had arrested two of them but later let them off on bail. The girl's family had to leave the town after threats by the families of the accused.

The girl's family says the men had found out that the family has shifted to Rohtak and were building pressure on them to withdraw the case from court. The accused had reportedly offered $75,000 to the victim as an out of court "settlement money" - an offer rejected by the girl.

"We had filed a case in the court for the arrest of the three accused and the cancellation of the bail of the other two. We were getting constant threats to strike an out-of-court deal, but we remained firm. That's why they attacked her again," the girl's brother told reporters.

This case comes nearly four years after the gang rape of a 23-year-old medical student on a bus in Delhi sparked massive outrage and invited global attention to India's struggles tackling a sexual assault crisis. Despite several measures, including tougher laws, taken after the Delhi gang rape of December 2012, the rapes haven't stopped. As per the latest figures of India's National Crime Records Bureau, India witnessed an average of over 100 rapes per day in 2014.

Activists say the number of actual rapes would be much more because most rapes go unreported.



ON DALITS -- Excerpt from WSJ below: “Cases involving Dalits are all heard in one court, he says. Mr. Baghel, the defense lawyer, says the lack of physical evidence and the discrepancies between Mr. Prasad's first and second statements would bolster the defense. He says that Ms. Devi's leaving her house after dark "shows consent, doesn't it?"


http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303290904579276454146242952

India Rape Cases Colored by Caste
Attitudes About Rape Have Been Slow to Change in India's Vast Hinterland, Creating Problems for Lower-Caste Women
By KRISHNA POKHAREL and TRIPTI LAHIRI
Dec. 30, 2013 10:30 p.m. ET

DALAN CHAPARA, India— Lalasa Devi says that before her attacker grabbed her by the throat, he snarled "Chamar," the name of the so-called untouchable caste into which she was born. "What can you do to me?"

Then he threw her to the ground and raped her, she says.

RAPE ALLEGATION UPSETS INDIAN VILLAGE


Lalasa Devi, a woman belonging to a caste once considered 'untouchable,' says she was raped in March by an upper-caste man from her village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. VIVEK SINGH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Ms. Devi, a mother of four in her mid-30s, says authorities treated her poorly when she registered a complaint against her alleged assailant, who belongs to a high caste in this small northern Indian village. Nine months after the alleged rape, the man she accused is free on bail, and it isn't clear when a trial will begin.

"I'm dying of shame," she said in a recent interview, covering her head with the corner of her sari. "All I had was my honor…you lose that, you have nothing." She authorized The Wall Street Journal to use her name.

Women across India face daunting obstacles in pressing sexual-assault allegations. An unfriendly justice system and fear of social stigma make many reluctant even to report such crimes, women's rights advocates say.

Rural, lower-caste women such as Ms. Devi also face pervasive and deeply rooted discrimination against those once called "untouchables"—now known as Dalits, or oppressed people. "It's the mind-set of the dominant castes," says Deepika, a Dalit-rights activist in New Delhi who uses only one name. "To them, raping a Dalit woman is not a sin."

A court in the western state of Rajasthan in 1995 acquitted five men of rape, saying upper-caste men couldn't have raped a Dalit. The state has asked a higher court to review that case—a request that is still pending.

Attitudes toward Dalits have improved since the 1990s, and a wrenching national dialogue now is under way about sexual assault. The fatal gang rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi a year ago has prompted new laws against sexual violence and efforts to improve the justice system.

In cities, more victims are stepping forward to report crimes. But in the vast hinterland, where the majority of India's women live, change is coming much more slowly.

ENLARGE
Kailash Nath Singh, the police officer now in charge of Ms. Devi's case, says police did the best they could. They have arrested an upper-caste resident of Ms. Devi's village in Uttar Pradesh and charged him with rape. "We have tried to do justice to the victim and have taken her case to the court," he says.

The accused, a cattle trader named Santosh Singh, denies having anything to do with the alleged attack.

Ms. Devi's home village, Dalan Chapara, has a population of about 1,250, nearly all members of Ms. Devi's Chamar caste, whose forebears were leather tanners, and of the accused's Rajput caste of traditional landowners.

A gravel road running through the village divides the castes. For the most part, the Rajput houses are built from concrete and the Dalit houses have thatched roofs. There is no marriage across caste lines.

EARLIER COVERAGE: A RAPE THAT SHOCKED THE WORLD

The WSJ profiles the victims and the accused in last year's death in New Delhi, and examines the deep-seated problem of harassment of women in India.

A selection:

"False promise" complaints , refer to a growing trend of rape cases brought against men who promise marriage in hopes of persuading a woman to agree to sex. (11/29/2013)
For the wife of one of the convicted rapists , the misfortune to be married to a convict is not extraordinary: Her basic difficulties are a way of life in the Indian countryside. (9/23/2013)
Some conservative quarters of society push back against change, even as four men are convicted. (9/11/2013)
To wed your rapist, or not? Sexism pervades the Indian legal system, a WSJ examination shows. (5/17/2013)
Sharp finger nails for defense: Women describe running a gauntlet of harassment in their daily lives. (9/27/2013)
The victim's close friend describes the young couple's complex love story. (1/30/2013)
The bus helper with a singsong voice: New details emerge about the accused and their alleged intentions the evening of the attack. (1/10/2013)
"Wake up, wake up," she urged her friend. How the fateful day began. (1/9/2013)
Victim's body is flown home as grief and outrage sweep India and the world. (12/30/2012)

Villagers said Dalits aren't allowed in the homes of higher-caste neighbors. At community events, there is segregated seating and separate sets of glasses and tableware are used. Rajput visitors to Dalit homes won't eat or drink.

"Constitutionally, everyone has equal rights," says Bipin Chand, a Dalit primary-school teacher who lives in the village. "But socially there is no equality."

None of the Dalit homes in Dalan Chapara has a toilet. After nightfall on March 20, Ms. Devi says, she was feeling sick to her stomach and went outside to relieve herself in a field.

A group of villagers was gathered under a giant fig tree, singing Hindu hymns to celebrate the approach of the spring festival Holi, accompanied by drums and clanging cymbals.

Ms. Devi says a lone man approached her. She pointed her flashlight at him and told him to go away. Instead, she says, he put a hand over her mouth, choked her and raped her. Ms. Devi says she passed out.

When she didn't return home, her brother-in-law and her mother-in-law went looking for her, found her unconscious and carried her home. They say her neck was badly bruised.

Ms. Devi says when her husband saw her, he cried. Her husband, 38-year-old builder Ramesh Prasad, called the police.

When nobody came, says Mr. Prasad, he and his wife and a group of villagers went to the police station. Officers there asked them to provide a written statement, per police procedure.

Ms. Devi can neither read nor write. Her husband says he can but was too shaken to do so. Mr. Chand, the schoolteacher, and Rajesh Kumar Yadav, a village leader, drafted the account.

Ms. Devi, who was having trouble speaking, didn't reveal right away that she had been raped, but Mr. Chand says he suspected it. In India, being raped often is considered shameful. He says he thought: "If all this is put on paper, the whole family's reputation will be tarnished. It will be difficult for the family's daughters to be married off."

What they wrote, he says, is that Ms. Devi had been attacked by Mr. Singh.

Mr. Singh, 33, said in a recent interview he had been framed. He said he had spent that evening buying mutton for his family and helping a friend to retrieve a motorcycle impounded by the police.

When Ms. Devi and her husband returned home, Ms. Devi confided to him, in whispers, that she had been raped, both of them recalled recently.

Ms. Devi and her husband say they decided to seek out the superintendent of police the following morning in the district seat of Deoria because the local police still hadn't come to investigate.

They provided Keshav Chand Goswami, a senior police officer there, with a new written complaint. This one accused Mr. Singh of rape.

A local TV reporter captured the ensuing conversation on tape.

"How many children does she have?" the police officer, Mr. Goswami, asked Ms. Devi's husband.

"Four," he replied.

"What's the age of the eldest one?" the officer asked.

"Fourteen or 15," he said.

"Who would rape such an old woman?" the officer asked. He added that he would look into the matter, and walked away.

The TV reporter who captured the exchange, Uma Shanker Bhatt, says when he got onto his motorcycle, he said to himself: "He's given us a very big news story."

Back in Ms. Devi's village, police investigator Ram Murat Yadav had arrived. Ms. Devi's 55-year-old mother-in-law, Samdei Devi, says the investigator told her Ms. Devi and Mr. Singh must have had a clandestine relationship.

In rural India, police and women's rights activists say, cash payments and other extrajudicial agreements between families of accused rapists and their alleged victims are common practice, used to protect reputations and avoid publicity.

Ms. Devi's husband says the investigator pressed him to drop the case in exchange for 200,000 rupees, or about $3,200, from Mr. Singh. Her husband says he refused.

Both the investigator and Mr. Singh deny making such an offer, and the investigator says he never insinuated that Ms. Devi had a relationship with the accused. The head of the local police at the time says he didn't think Mr. Yadav would have insinuated such a thing about Ms. Devi or pressed the couple to accept a payment.

Ms. Devi's husband, Mr. Prasad, says he returned to the local police station about 24 hours after the attack to submit the new written complaint—the one alleging rape. Officers registered a complaint of sexual harassment—not rape—against Mr. Singh.

Police there say they never received a written statement mentioning rape from Mr. Prasad. A neighbor who says he accompanied Mr. Prasad on both visits said police told Mr. Prasad on his second trip that they already had a copy of his statement.

The next morning, March 22, video footage of Mr. Prasad's exchange with Mr. Goswami, the police official at the Deoria police headquarters, hit TV channels across the country, bringing national attention to her case. A senior police official apologized to Ms. Devi on behalf of the police force.

Mr. Goswami, who has since been transferred because of his comment, says his remarks were "distorted and falsely presented."

The comments were cast as evidence of official apathy toward protecting women—just one day after Parliament's upper house had approved tougher sex-crimes laws and harsher punishments for rapists.

A new police officer, Kailash Nath Singh—no relation to the defendant—was assigned to handle the investigation. He upgraded the charge against Mr. Singh to rape, and charged him with the Indian equivalent of a hate crime under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989.

At that point—three days after the alleged attack—Ms. Devi was sent to the district hospital in Deoria for a medical examination. Doctors there concluded that "no definite opinion about rape can be given."

By then, the sari Ms. Devi was wearing the night of the attack had been washed by her daughter, which the police say rendered it useless as forensic evidence. The police officer who upgraded the charge to rape says forensic evidence wasn't collected because the police initially registered the case as sexual harassment, not rape.

On March 23, the day of the medical examination, Mr. Singh was arrested. He could face life imprisonment if convicted of rape and caste-motivated violence charges.

In September, a state appeals court ordered Mr. Singh released on bail after his lawyer, M.K. Singh Baghel, argued that Ms. Devi was a "consenting party" in any sex act with his client. Mr. Singh's bail petition, filed by his lawyer, also cited Ms. Devi's caste, saying she was seeking "illegal gain" by "harassing and defaming" Mr. Singh.

Although the court ordered a trial to be concluded within six months, proceedings have yet to begin. Vijay Kumar Yadav, the head public prosecutor at the Deoria district court, says it is unlikely to start soon, given the number of cases on the docket. Cases involving Dalits are all heard in one court, he says.

Mr. Baghel, the defense lawyer, says the lack of physical evidence and the discrepancies between Mr. Prasad's first and second statements would bolster the defense. He says that Ms. Devi's leaving her house after dark "shows consent, doesn't it?"

He adds that Mr. Singh didn't have any sexual contact with Ms. Devi and that his statements were part of a legal argument based on what he says are "weaknesses" in the prosecution's case.

While they wait for the court case to start, Ms. Devi and her family are trying to rebuild their lives.

Ms. Devi says news reports about rapes around India, an almost-daily occurrence since the New Delhi gang rape last year, often trigger flashbacks to her own assault. She says she paces while replaying the attack over and over in her mind.

"How did this happen to me?" she asks. "We stayed within our caste. From the tree to the road, it's our caste," she says, referring to the field where she was raped.

She says she feels ashamed. Her neighbors laugh and make mean-spirited comments, she says, and her children are taunted at school.

Ms. Devi's eldest daughter, Bina, says she has been asking her father to build a toilet in the house because she is afraid to go outside. Mr. Prasad says he plans to build one soon.

When speaking of the assault, which he calls an "unthinkable and shameful thing," his eyes well with tears. He says he tries to comfort his wife the best he can. At night, when they are in bed together, Mr. Prasad says, Ms. Devi tells him she feels impure and often sobs uncontrollably.

"Why are you crying?" Mr. Prasad says he asks. "We didn't do anything wrong."

Write to Krishna Pokharel at krishna.pokharel@wsj.com and Tripti Lahiri at tripti.lahiri@wsj.com