Long Walk to Justice

Nayana,an engineer with an IT company,was the more assertive of the two,he recalls. “I was shy and reserved and happy to let her lead,” he says. “After the wedding,we shifted to Pune from Karad (a city in Maharashtra’s Satara district),where we grew up. We bought this flat; our next step was to plan a baby and also work towards Nayana’s dream of going abroad and working there. Her company had already identified her for an assignment to the US,” he says.

On October 7,Pujari came back from work at about 8 pm. Nayana called to say she too was about to leave her workplace. “She usually took the company bus. If she was late,she would take a cab or the public transport and I would pick her up from the bus stand,” says Pujari. When he didn’t hear from his wife by 9 pm,he went to the bus stand. By 11.30 pm,he had reached her office,but the guard told him that Nayana had left at 8 pm. By then distraught,Pujari lodged a missing persons complaint.

Nayana’s body was found two days later. She had been strangled with her dupatta and her body dumped in the forest of Jerewadi near Rajguru Khed,about 50 km from Pune. “I went blank. What devastated me was the state it was in. No one should have to see his wife’s body in that condition. Her face was smashed from one side,there were bite marks on her neck,and a blue band ran around it where she must have been strangled; blood was clotted at various spots on her body…” he trails off.

As Nayana had left the office,Yogesh Raut,who was a cab driver attached with Synechron,the IT company which employed her,offered to take her home as she waited for public transport. Accompanying him were Mahesh Thakur and Vishwas Kadam. Both worked as cab drivers with different IT companies. Rajesh Choudhary,who worked as a security guard at Synechron,joined them later,following which they raped Nayana and strangled her with a dupatta. They then smashed her face against a stone so that she could not be identified easily.

The next few days passed in a haze for Pujari — the ambulance,the drive to the village and the cremation,after which the police calls started. “In such cases,the prime suspect is always the husband. So I had to give many statements to the police,” Pujari says. Around two months later,three of the four men accused of the crime were arrested. “A Marathi news channel caught me at the police station and put me on air for my reaction. As I put the headphone on,I heard the news reporter say,‘We have with us Abhijit Pujari,whose wife was brutally raped and murdered’. Raped? I was hearing this for the first time. I had thought that she had been murdered for money. I lost all my composure and broke down. People had to pick me up and take me home.”

But when Nayana’s company brushed off all connections with the three men who had picked her up in a cab that ferried the company’s employees,saying they didn’t know the cab company,he realised he needed to do something. “I hardly spoke in public. But I called a press conference and questioned the company’s responsibility (in ensuring the safety of its workers). I think Nayana gave me the strength,” he says.

Since then,it has been a grim saga of determination. The outrage in Pune against the crime was his ally but there were many obstacles along the way. Pujari applied for and got the case transferred to a fast track court,met Maharashtra Home Minister RR Patil to have a special lawyer appointed to fight the case and paid the fee of Rs 3 lakh required for the special prosecutor. But as things started to roll,the main accused,Raut,escaped from police custody in October 2011. He gave the police the slip from Pune’s Sassoon Hospital,where he had been taken when he complained of stomach ache. That proved to be a severe setback to the case. Moreover,one of the men,Rajesh Choudhary,who had turned approver,backed out saying his family was being threatened.

“I would go to the police station every 15 days to enquire about the case but would get half-baked answers in return. The thought that the man who killed my wife was roaming free made my blood boil. My faith in the system crumbled. The case was almost at a standstill,” he says.

A year went by. In December 2012,after the Delhi gang rape and the countrywide protests against violence against women,the case came back into focus. “An Indian Express report about her case reaching a dead end and the support it got from the rest of the media was amazing. Till then my pleas had fallen on deaf ears,” he says.

Pujari took out a silent march despite pressure from the police,and found overwhelming response. “Within a week a Special Investigative Team was formed and within six months,Raut was arrested. The case was back on track. Today,it’s a matter of great satisfaction for me that my wife’s killer is behind bars,” says Pujari.

But despite this small victory,what is overriding is a deep sense of grief and disappointment at the bitter lessons learnt on the way. “There are too many gaps in the system. In Nayana’s case,the police did not think of tracing the threat calls that Rajesh was getting till I suggested it to them. Fast track courts have been formed but they have already fallen prey to the system. For example,Nayana’s case is now in a fast track court that has 900 cases. And,yes,we need the death penalty for rapists,” says Pujari,who gave up his job for about two years in 2010 to pursue the case. He went back to a full-time job last year. In February,Nayana’s case was transferred to a special court to hear cases of crimes against women.

Through all of this,Pujari faced his share of unwarranted criticism. “Many would say,‘Why did she (Nayana) sit in the car in the first place? Why didn’t she shout or resist the men?’ The insinuation that women are responsible for getting raped was in so many comments,even at the police station. A few cops said so outright. Many friends and relatives stopped meeting me. Many people in the society (apartment complex) also didn’t talk to me for a number of days — either for the fear of getting involved or perhaps they just didn’t know what to say to a man whose wife had been raped and killed,” says Pujari.

In the meantime,a marriage proposal helped to put his life back on track. “I told the girl and the family all about my past and the fight I had taken up. I told them that my past is a part of my present. I think they liked this transparency and hats off to my wife Rajshri who is a pillar of strength in my struggle to get Nayana justice,” says Abhijit. The couple now have an eight-month-old daughter Kaavya. Egged on by Rajshri,who is an MBA and works with an IT company,Abhijit is now considering starting a Nayana Pujari trust to help poor victims of rape get justice.