ગુજરાતી
English
Rupa Behn Mody is a survivor of the Gulberg massacre during which she was taking shelter with her sons Azhar and Binaifer in the home of Ehsan and Zakia Jafri. As they were trying to escape the violent mob, Azhar’s hand slipped away and he was left behind. That was the last time Rupa Behn saw him.
Rupa Behn, dealing with apathetic and disinterested police, was forced to look for her son on her own. She has stopped at nothing in her search for Azhar and still has a glimmer of hope that she will see her son again.
Over the past 17 years, supporters like you have been the backbone of our fight for justice for the survivors of the Gujarat massacre. Whilst pushing for reformative justice, we’ve secured nearly 170 convictions against powerful perpetrators of violence, with the Zakia Jafri case and the Gulberg Appeal still active in the courts.
Meet Shobha, Rashminara, and Rupa Behn.
Three women are fighting separate battles in separate corners of the country. Their connection? You. Shobha, Rashminara Begum and Rupa Behn Mody are human rights defenders in their own right, however your support of CJP helps us to empower them with the tools to amplify their voices and fight for justice.
Read on to see the impact of your support, extending from providing aid in Assam’s NRC process, to the decades-long battle against the violence of the Gujarat carnage, and into the depths of the forest in Sonbhadra, UP, where Adivasis, Dalits and forest-dwelling communities are fighting for their right to land and livelihood.
Shobha
Shobha has been a forest rights activist in the Sonbhadra region for over 20 years. Her struggles, exacerbated as a Dalit woman, encompass violence, sexual assault, torture of her loved ones and illegal incarceration. But her strength in fighting for 4 bighas of land, amplified as a member of the All India Union of Forest Working People (AIUFWP), has never wavered.
With you on our side, we’re working closely with Shobha, her community and the AIUFWP, to quash all false cases pitted against forest rights defenders in Sonbhadra, in an attempt to silence them in their quest to reclaim their land.
MEET SHOBHA
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Rashminara Begum
In 2016, Rashminara Begum was wrongfully accused of being a Bangladeshi illegal immigrant, solely because two different school leaving certificates gave two different dates of birth. Rashminara’s village and school were washed away in the 2004 flood, so she had no way of proving that these were just clerical errors.
So, while 3 months pregnant, she was literally dragged to the Kokrajhar Detention Camp in North Assam, where she was held in the same cell as 4 murderers. She was denied the adequate care an expecting mother needs, and was given only two measly meals a day.
It was only because Rashminara was due to give birth, that she was moved to a local hospital, before a kind-hearted politician filed a petition on her behalf to intervene in the situation. Finally, the Supreme Court ordered that Rashminara could stay at home until the final judgment in her case.
Our team in Assam are helping people just like Rashminara. Through our telephone advice line, and our on-ground volunteers, we’ve helped lakhs and lakhs of people to make their claim for citizenship in Assam’s brutal and unjust NRC process. In addition to this, through public hearings with Rashminara, we’re working to advocate for prison reform for women in both prisons and detention camps.
