I don’t know who she was… I don’t know how she looked… I don’t know how she smiled.
I don’t know how she played… I don’t know how lively she was… I don’t know how beautiful her smile was.
But I know an 8-year-old would have never thought even in her worst dreams that one fine day she will go out and will never return back in her mother’s arms and her father’s lap. She could have never thought that darkness will have its hands on her, will hold her tight until her last breath.
I don’t know who the girl from Kathua was. I don’t know she was abducted. I don’t know how she was sedated for days, how she was raped, strangled. I don’t know how her head was smashed with a stone to ensure her death.
But when I close my eyes, I see her innocent face and tiny hands trying to escape. I feel my heart frozen, shattered and deep into terror.
Not because another girl was raped, not because we have another reason to take out candle marches, not because we have another Nirbhaya in our country, not because she was a Muslim, not because deep in my heart I know nothing will change, this will happen to many more girls.
I feel this terror because of the guilt and fear that even if those bastard rapists, those fanatics of lust may be hanged to death after years like those of Nirbhaya, we still have people in our country who take out a march that too with a national flag in their hands demanding bail for their rapists.
But oh, their punishment should be lenient because raping a girl is a big deal, but that girl was Muslim na, toh chalta hai! aur haan, not to forget, wo log rapist hai toh kya, deshbhakht bhi toh hai naa, they shouted “Bharat mata ki jai“.
The newspaper read “a Muslim was raped”, the news said it aloud “an eight-year-old muslim girl was raped.”
Just as the headlines, her little soul couldn’t find peace. Battles over politics and religion made its way, yet another stone of justice remains unturned.