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India: 30 years later, the 1992 Ajmer serial rapes still cause grief and outrage
JUL 22, 2023 3:00 PM
BY ASHLYN DAVIS
For decades, the Indian media has artfully played the game of hiding scandals or instances that exposed the activities of Islamic supremacists and jihadis, and illuminated their mindset. However, in the past ten years, the onset of Internet literacy among Indians and their newly found zeal for political and social awareness have exhumed many skeletons of Islamic jihad activity. The 1992 Ajmer rape case is just one such incident. This dead topic found its way back to the media after the teaser of the Hindi movie called Ajmer 92 was released a couple of months ago. Despite many objections from the Muslim camp, as well as threats and political gimmicks, the movie finally made its way to the theatres on Friday, July 21, 2023, sparking widespread national discussion of these gory serial rapes.
Ajmer is a prominent town, one of the oldest in the Indian state of Rajasthan. It is home to a major Muslim shrine, the tomb of Ajmer Shariff. Politicians, celebrities and high-profile media influencers frequent this Sufi tomb to pay respects, as well as to gain publicity and media headlines. Though the shrine is considered one of the holiest for Muslims in India, in 1992, its high-profile caretakers were embroiled in a serial rape case. Their massive religious influence aside, they were also politically well-connected, which, according to reports, seamlessly helped bury the scandalous and ghastly incident.
The chilling 1992 Ajmer serial rapes involved hundreds of school girls, a Muslim Chishti and some horrifying instances of blackmail and sexual exploitation.
These cases came to light after a local paper, Navjyoti, released some highly objectionable photographs, along with a report claiming that some local gangs were blackmailing female students of Ajmer’s Sophia Girls School. The horrific news sent tremors across the country, and readers were deeply shocked at the revelations.
The scandal started with one Farooq Chishti, who belonged to the khadims (caretakers) of Ajmer Sharif Dargah, befriending a student of the Girl’s School and luring her into his sinister trap. Reportedly, he raped her, took some inappropriate photographs, and then began blackmailing her. This student was not the only victim of the notorious cycle involving this khadim. The khadim had demanded that she bring him more girls. The girl was forced to introduce him to other girls to keep him from making her inappropriate pictures public; the girls she brought in were also raped and blackmailed in the same way.
The gang, which consisted of Muslim men from seats of religious and political influence, continued to expand its operations and target an increasing number of Hindu minor girls. While Farooq Chishti was the president of the Ajmer Youth Congress, others, such as Anwar Chishti and Nafis Chishti, held key positions, including joint secretary and vice president of the city Congress unit. (The Congress is India’s grand old party, which ruled the country for most of its independent years and exerted significant influence countrywide.) Some of the other accused were also the Chishti khadims (caretakers) of the Islamic shrine, Ajmer Dargah.
After the case details were public, the town was buzzing with rumors that many victims had committed suicide. As outraged civilians took to the streets, demanding justice, a spike in communal tension became the natural outcome. But as per reports, the police, upon facing political resistance, abruptly stalled the investigations around the case.
The police and NGOs that were focused on women’s issues stated that building a case against the accused individuals was challenging, as most of the victims were not ready to come forward. The photographs and videos that were being used to blackmail the girls helped in identifying the accused and building the case to some extent. “The accused were in a position of influence, both socially and financially, and that made it even more difficult to persuade the girls to come forward and depose,” said retired Rajasthan D.G.P. Omendra Bhardwaj. Bhardwaj was serving as the deputy inspector general of police in Ajmer at the time of the incident.
Finally, 19 individuals were charged with kidnapping and gang rape under the Indian Penal Code, as well as with violating the Prohibition on Indecent Representation of Women. One has since committed suicide. Eight were given life sentences, and four were acquitted in 2001.
In 2004, the Supreme Court of India dismissed the appeals filed by the state and the convicts. A judicial bench comprising Justice BP Singh and Justice N Santosh Hegde held: “Having regard to the facts and circumstances of the case, we are of the view that the ends of justice would be met if the sentence is reduced to ten years rigorous imprisonment.”
Though a fast-track court in Ajmer convicted Farooq Chishti in 2007, in 2013, Rajasthan High Court released him, stating he had served “enough” time.
It has been 30 years, but the infamous 1992 Ajmer gang rape case still stands as an open, ripe, unhealed wound, mocking the victims who are now mothers and grandmothers, but were just kids at the time they had to endure rape and blackmailing; these kids were overlooked, neglected, and denied justice for being Hindus in a Muslim-pandering secular nation.
Last year, a video of Ajmer Dargah Khadim Salman Chishti surfaced on various social media platforms, wherein he could be seen making an appeal to eliminate former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma. In the 2-minute-50 second-long video, the khadim, who has over 13 cases (including that of murder and attempt to murder) filed against him, offered his house and property to anyone who “brings the head of Nupur Sharma.”
Sick, Muslim predator attacked pensioner and child
after ‘trawling streets’ for victims
By Andrew Bardsley, Manchester Evening News, July 18, 2023:
A remorseless rapist attacked a pensioner and sexually assaulted a child while ‘trawling the streets at night time looking for vulnerable individuals’, a court heard. Issa Brayzi-Pour, 22, has been jailed for public protection after committing the attacks on two complete strangers in Farnworth.
He had been in the country for about 10 months after arriving in the UK as an asylum seeker from Iran. The 70-year-old woman had been to the pub with members of her family where a boxing match was being shown, Minshull Street Crown Court heard.
At one point she left the pub and Brayzi-Pour ‘stalked’ and ‘followed’ her, prosecutor Henry Blackshaw claimed. They engaged in conversation, and she feared that Brayzi-Pour was going to rob her.
Ms Blackshaw said that Brayzi-Pour had taken hold of her, and was ‘effectively steering her around corners’. But as they reached a side road Brayzi-Pour raped her, during the summer last year….
The court heard how the woman has suffered ‘significant and severe’ psychological issues, and ‘life changing problems’. It was then discovered that Brayzi-Pour had sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl 12 days earlier, also in Farnworth.
She recognised Brayzi-Pour as someone who had given her and her friends cigarettes a few days beforehand.
When she asked him for another cigarette, Brayzi-Pour asked her to perform oral sex on him and tried to kiss her, after she followed him onto some ‘waste ground’. “There was clearly discussion about tobacco and she was lured to an isolated spot nearby, with the promise of it there,” Mr Blackshaw said.
Respectful and polite rapist
Defending, Bunty Batra said Brayzi-Pour has no criminal record in the UK or his home country. He said people who know him reacted with ‘shock’ to his crimes, and that he was described as being ‘respectful and polite’.
Mr Batra denied there was any element of ‘grooming’ towards the child, claiming their interaction was ‘extremely brief’. He also denied that Brayzi-Pour had ‘targeted’ the pensioner or that he’d been ‘trawling the streets’.
Brayzi-Pour, of Longcauseway, Farnworth, Bolton, was unanimously found guilty of two counts of rape and of offences of sexual assault and inciting a child to engage in sexual activity. The judge, Recorder Andrew McLoughlin, said Brayzi-Pour still maintains his victims consented to his behaviour.
But he said Brayzi-Pour’s version of events ‘bears no relationship whatsoever’ to the evidence. “There is no remorse shown by you, because you believe somehow that all these matters took place with the victims’ consent, they clearly did not do so,” the judge said….
Why would there be remorse when he was just doing what the Quran permits. "Respectful and polite" and a rapist - he was obviously a good Muslim.
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