ASIFA BANO
“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”
Nelson Mandela, Former President of South Africa
Based on various international news sources, on January 10, 2018, Asifa Bano, an eight-year-old girl in a purple dress, was grazing her horses in a meadow in Kashmir when a man stopped her, looked quickly around the area, and asked her, “Why do you work so hard?”
With a smile, she asked calmly, “What do you want from me?”
Through clenched teeth, he asked, “Do you like where you are?” Then, without giving her a chance to answer, he beckoned her into the forest. “Where are we going?” She sounded sincerely panicked. She wanted to say something, but no words came.
He turned around and forced a smile.
Was this a Trap?
According to police, he grabbed her by the neck and forced her to take sleeping pills. With the help of a friend, they say, he dragged her to a nearby temple. Then, he locked her inside. What did he really want? For the next three days, police say, the two men and at least one other raped her repeatedly. Suspects told investigators that the men’s motive had been to drive Asifa’s nomadic community out of the area. In the end, she was strangled, after one of the men allegedly insisted on raping her one last time.
On the morning of January 17, Muhammad Yusuf Pujwala, the adoptive father of Asifa, was sitting outside his home in Kathua when one of his neighbors came running toward him. His face said it all. He stopped in front of Mr. Pujwala and broke the news: They had found his eight-yearold daughter, Asifa Bano. Her crumpled body lay in bushes in the forest, a few hundred meters away, in the same purple dress, now smeared with blood.
“I knew something horrible had happened to my girl; she was killed.” He stopped for a while and sat in silence. Mr. Pujwala, a 52-year-old man with deep sunken eyes, told the BBC in an interview recently. His wife, Naseema Bibi, sat beside him, faintly crying while repeatedly murmuring, “Asifa. How could I go on without you.”
What Happened at Asifa’s Funeral?
The Gujjars wanted to bury Asifa in a graveyard where they had purchased some land a few years ago and had already buried five people. However, when they arrived there, Mr Pujwala said, they were surrounded by Hindu right-wing activists who threatened them with violence if they were to continue with the burial.
“We had to walk seven miles to bury her in another village,” Mr Pujwala said. Two of his daughters were killed in an accident some years ago. On his wife’s insistence, he adopted Asifa, the daughter of his brother-in-law.
His wife described Asifa as a “chirping bird” who ran like a “deer.” When her parents traveled, Asifa looked after the herd. “That made her the darling of the community,” Ms. Bibi said. “She was the center of our universe. We all know the feelings of grief and loss that follow the death of someone we love.”