Burnt Alive

"They tried to burn my pregnant sister alive."_x000D_ _x000D_ - Haseena Banu Dhapali sister of the victim Rihana Banu Dhapali_x000D_ ............................................................................................_x000D_ _x000D_ Rihana Banu Dhapali is the eldest of her eight siblings, four sisters and four brothers from Hirminiya VDC, Banke District. She is 19 or twenty, not very sure about her age, nor is her father certain. She was married to Farid Seikh last year. Samim Sheikh, her father says “I tried to give her as much as I could afford like a bed, gas stove, gas cylinder and a table”. Before the wedding, there weren't any demand from her husband. He was happy to take her home with the voluntary gifts that her father managed to give her daughter. After few months of her wedding, Farid Sheikh started putting forward his demands, a buffalo, a motorcycle and a golden watch. _x000D_ Rihana says, her in-laws and husband didn't treat her very well. She wouldn't even get three meals a day. After few months of her wedding, she once returned back to her parent’s with full of bruises in her back. Her younger sister Haseena, with her eyes tormented with pain and tears, said “He had beaten her up with his belt”. _x000D_ Farid Sheikh came to take Rihana back. Her neighbors facilitated and convinced her to return to her husband, and see if things would be better as the husband himself wanted to take her back. Her father wanted to give one more shot without imagining that something worst could happen to his daughter._x000D_ While returning back, Rihana had never imagined that something worst was waiting for her. She found herself with her hands and mouth tied up, mother-in-law splashing kerosene on lower parts of her body, and her husband lighting the match. She was eight months pregnant. She was unconscious for three days, and when she opened her eyes, she found herself at the same place in an undying pain. With her shivering lips, she said “they did not even take me for treatment, it was hurting a lot, I couldn't move, they wouldn't let me call my father”. They wouldn't take her to hospital until she accepted to say that the incident was only an accident, and she had caught fire while cooking._x000D_ A powerful political leader, Rizwan Miya, from the Laxmanpur VDC, ward no.8 mediated this and convinced her to tell the story of the incident as an accident, only then she was taken to the Bheri hospital . She was undergoing treatment for one and half months at the Bheri hospital. Her eight months baby in her belly did not survive to see this world. On 6th of May 2014, when the doctors said the case was very complicated, she was brought in to Bir Hospital in Kathmandu with the help of an organization. Father, Samim says he has reported the case in police, given it to media too, but Rizwan Miya is a powerful leader, and perhaps that is why Farid including his family is not yet under arrest. Samim doesn’t want her daughter to return back to her husband, but he says he will try to marry her daughter in a better place. But where is this better place? Who guarantees that his three other daughters wouldn't suffer the same? Is this first case where a leader has misused their power to protect the perpetrators instead of the victim? There is an anti-dowry law, but what is not making it effective? _x000D_ _x000D_ Written by Seema Pandey for Stories of Nepal

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