Justice for Sahar Gul

On Malala Day, as we will now come to revere, remember and respect July 12, we heard young Malala speak beautifully and eloquently about the need to fight for our rights as women, by ourselves. As much as the sun rose that day on the dawn of a renewed fight for the rights of women across the world, it also dismally set with the acquittal of the three people who tortured young Sahar Gul – not very far from where Malala was shot.

Sahar spent her childhood growing up in Badakshan, Afghanistan. Following the death of her father, she was shoved about by her family, ultimately ending up with her stepbrother – where she worked on everything from tending to livestock to farming and taking care of the orchards. Her stepbrother’s wife, though, didn’t want her around, and pressurized him to give Sahar’s hand in marriage to Gulam Sakhi. Sahar was just 12 – she had not even reached anywhere near the legal age of marriage (16 years).

Gulam Sakhi bought her in an illegal exchange, and took her to his family. Sahar’s husband’s family forced her into prostitution, but when she refused, they tortured her and left her in a dirty cellar without windows for months together. Her hands and legs were tied with ropes, and she was given bread and water every now and then. Beaten regularly, young Sahar was also tormented by her husband’s family. They would hit her with sticks, bite her chest, insert hot irons in her ears and vagina and pull out fingernails from her hands. She was near death – and was rescued by the police, who discovered her lying in hay and animal dung. When she was found, her clothes were in tatters, she was barely conscious and she could simply not stand. Constantly moaning, her body parts were so badly beaten that she couldn’t move.

The police arrested the mother-in-law, Siyamoi, her daughter Mahkhurd and finally Amanullah, the father-in-law — who was discovered hiding in a burqa and a blanket. Gulam Sakhi’s mother tried to defend their conduct by arguing that they “bought” her and hence she had no choice but to comply with the orders of her husband. Originally, in her case, prison sentences ranging up to 10 years each for three of her in-laws were ordered. But the prosecution has ended with the acquittal of her tormentors, on the ground that there was “not enough evidence to support their sentences”.

That she was married off – nay – sold – even before she could say “growing up” is a terrible thing in itself. But add to that cruelty and torture of terrible proportions – how can something so tiny as procedure defeat the purpose of justice altogether? Sahar’s torturers’ acquittal comes closely at the heels of a quashed effort to endorse a law on bringing violence against women in Afghanistan to an end – that too, on the pretext that the aforesaid legislation was un-Islamic for wanting to end forced marriage and laying down a specific age for marriage. The accused were freed despite having imprisoned, starved, burned and beaten Sahar.