The 1992 Ajmer serial gang rape and blackmailing case is considered one of India’s most condemnable crimes. The incident, which took place in the city of Ajmer in Rajasthan, involved hundreds of young girls, some college students, some still in school. Navjyoti, a local newspaper, broke news of the scandal after publishing some nude photos and reporting on school students being blackmailed by local gangs. During the investigation of the case, the police came under political pressure as the main accused Farooq Chishti was the President of Ajmer Indian Youth Congress and Khadim of Ajmer Sharif Dargah. The court ultimately charged 18 serial offenders; Four of the eight were acquitted in 2001 after being sentenced to life imprisonment. Many comparisons have been made between this case and the Rotherham child sexual abuse scandal, which occurred in the town of Rotherham in South Yorkshire, northern England, from the late 1980s to the 2010s.
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An incident that shook Ajmer
In 1992, a group of local influential people targeted some college and school going girls for blackmailing them after sexually exploiting them. Most of the victims were from Sophia Senior Secondary School, Ajmer. These girls were photographed in objectionable ways and were also raped several times. After the incident was reported in the media, it came out as a stigma for the city which hosts the famous Ajmer Sharif Dargah and is synonymous with the mysticism and philosophy of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti.
Sophia Senior Secondary School, Ajmer
first kill
Reportedly, the first victim was a girl from Sophia Senior Secondary School, Ajmer who became the victim of the main accused Farooq Chishti, who lured her into his trap. After taking obscene photos of her, Farooq Chishti started blackmailing the girl.
Farooq Chishti, the main accused in the 1992 Ajmer rape case.
working style
The girls were blackmailed after taking inappropriate photos, and gang members used the victims as bait to get their friends into the act, creating a chain reaction. When the first girl became the victim of main accused Farooq Chishti, he forced her to make friends with his other classmates. Eventually another girl would be raped, sexually assaulted, and photographed in a farmhouse, so the sequence continued. The gang expanded its activities, resulting in hundreds of girls being victimized in Ajmer. According to sources, most of the incidents took place in a farmhouse in Ajmer.
It all started with a love affair
According to one story, the basis of this sensational sex scandal was a love affair between a ninth class girl and a boy from a local affluent family. Later, a group of the boy’s friends took indecent photographs of the two and used them to blackmail the girl into introducing them to their classmates. According to reports, since then, the gang managed to expand its operations to include around 200 schoolgirls and college students.
Media coverage and investigation
On a sleepy morning in April 1992, the city of Ajmer woke up to a report published by Deenbandhu Chaudhary, editor of a local newspaper, Navjyoti. This report exposed a system of fraud and exploitation. According to Chaudhary, local law enforcement officials had stalled the investigation, despite knowing about the scam up to a year before the story broke. He said local politicians tried to stop legal action saying that the accusers came from influential “khadim” (caretakers) families of the dargah and legal action would create inter-communal tension. He said,
It was difficult to decide whether to publish the photographs or not.”
Deenbandhu Chaudhary, Editor of Navjyoti
Chaudhary said he ultimately decided to pursue the story because it was the only way to motivate the local administration to take action. He said,
Ultimately, we decided to go ahead as this was the only way to wake up the administration and the police from their slumber.”
Soon after Choudhary’s report was published, news of the incident sent a wave of mourning across the city and angry citizens staged a public demonstration during a three-day bandh. Forced to act due to public pressure, the BJP government ordered an inquiry, but state BJP secretary Omkar Singh Lakhotia admitted –
The action has been taken too late.”
Following this report, many stories of widespread blackmail and exploitation began to emerge. Ultimately, eight accused were charged in the FIR lodged by the police. A total of 18 people were arrested in the investigation and tension remained in the city for several days. As retired DGP Omendra Bhardwaj, former Ajmer Deputy Inspector General of Police, said, many victims were prevented from coming forward because of the social class of the accused. A sobering realization was that many of the victims, who were young and vulnerable, had already taken their own lives. What happened next was another story of political influence and administrative incompetence. Subsequently many victims, who were to testify, turned hostile and only a few victims came forward. Reportedly, the case is still open.
After this incident, there was such a strong stench of social stigma and exclusion that girls in the city were considered victims of the gang as it was estimated that there were several hundred victims. The situation was so bad in Ajmer that prospective grooms, who had to marry girls from Ajmer, would go to newspaper offices to determine whether the girl they wanted to marry was one of them or not. People used to say that if the girl is from Ajmer then they need to know more about her. According to Santosh Gupta, who worked as a reporter at the vernacular newspaper office in Ajmer, visitors used to come to his office and ask about prospective brides,
Is she one of those girls?”
Gupta, who also broke the story in 1992, says,
All they wanted to know was whether the woman they were marrying was one of the girls exploited in the blackmail scandal. Details of the case spread rapidly by word of mouth.”
accused
Altogether 18 people were found accused in this case. These 18 accused of rape and kidnapping were among the caretakers of the Sufi Dargah of Ajmer Sharif, Moinuddin Chishti. The police found Farooq Chishti to be the main accused in this case; Farooq was the president of Ajmer Youth Congress. The other accused Anwar Chishti was the joint secretary of the Ajmer Indian National Congress, and Nafees Chishti was its vice-president. The accused who were sentenced by the court also included Moizullah alias Puttan, Ishrat Ali, Anwar Chishti and Shamshuddin alias Maradona. Fugitive Salim Chishti was arrested in 2012. According to the police, another fugitive named Almas is still absconding. On 4 January 2012, one of the accused, Syed Salim Chishti, was arrested from Khalid Mohalla of Ajmer by the Special Operations Group (SOG) of Rajasthan Police. On 15 February 2018, Suhail Gani Chishti, the main accused in the 1992 Ajmer sex scandal, surrendered after 26 years. Suhail, a resident of Khadim Mohalla (Dargah Bazaar) of Ajmer, who was one of the most wanted in the scam, surrendered before the Ajmer district court.
Trial and conviction
It was challenging for the police and women-focused NGOs to build a case against the perpetrators as most victims did not want to come forward; However, photographs and videos used to blackmail the victims helped in identifying the accused and building a case against them. The investigation identified thirty victims; Of these, about a dozen filed suit, and ten withdrew, and there were only two victims who pursued the case. After 18 accused were charged with kidnapping and gang rape under the Indian Penal Code and Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition), key accused Farooq Chishti was later declared mentally unstable during his trial, three of the accused Committed suicide in jail, while another accused named Salim Nafees was arrested by the police in 2012. While the Rajasthan High Court upheld the verdict in 2013, it reduced the sentence from life imprisonment to the period the accused had already served. In 2014, apart from rejecting the state’s appeal, the Supreme Court had also rejected the appeal of the convicts. The bench of Justices N Santosh Hegde and BP Singh ruled-
Keeping in view the facts and circumstances of the case, we are of the view that the ends of justice would be served if the sentence is reduced to ten years of rigorous imprisonment.”
the silent suffering of the victims
Many of the victims were daughters of IAS officers or IPS officers, and most of them were from affluent Hindu families. The victims have had to suffer in silence in this horrific case, which has been the most disturbing part. Many rape victims experienced harassment and threats after the rape, without support from social groups or family members. According to police investigation, around six victims are accused of committing suicide. As a result of the threats, the Ajmer Women’s Group withdrew from taking up the cause of the victims. During that time the local newspapers had created a lot of sensation in Ajmer. Many victims were also reportedly blackmailed by these tabloids and local newspapers after being exploited, further tarnishing the conscience of the city. Having access to explicit photographs of the girls, owners and publishers asked the girls’ families for money to hide them.
no one wants to talk about the case
The Ajmer rape case of 1992 shocked the entire country. As the protests spread across the city, communal tensions increased. The bandh was observed for three days and reports of large-scale blackmail and exploitation started appearing in the media. Additionally, the police were criticized for failing to take action even after being made aware of the ongoing abuse. Additionally, local politicians had warned that taking action against the accused could lead to massive communal tension, leading to the case being stalled. According to Musabbir Hussain, joint secretary of the Anjuman committee that oversees the Ajmer Sharif Dargah in Ajmer,
This is a case that no one in Ajmer wants to talk about because of the nature of the crime. This is a stain on the history of our city.”
in popular media
In 2021, a web series based on the 1992 Ajmer rape case titled ‘Ajmer 1992’ was announced. Directed by Pushpendra Singh and starring Bhopal-based film and theater actor Sahil Mishra in the lead role, the web series is expected to start streaming from December 2021.
Categories: Biography
Source: vcmp.edu.vn