Statistics sometimes pack more punch than newspaper headlines. According to figures released by the National Crime Records Bureau last year, 93 women are raped in India every day, meaning a woman is raped here every 15 minutes. Each instance is an occasion for collective regret, but our outrage is often delimited by the quality of journalistic intervention. Our pursuit of justice is often set in motion by the reporter’s first judgment.

While the wider coverage of rape and sexual violence in recent times is a positive development, the rulebook for reporting such crimes also comes under greater scrutiny. Most reporters would confess that a balance between sensitivity and accuracy is difficult to strike in a climate of sensationalism. Moreover, cases like that of Priyadarshini Mattoo serve as reminders. Journalists can impact the judicial processes of this country, so the veracity of their findings needs to be examined.

How does one faithfully recount atrocities that victims never want to describe again to friends, let alone strangers? How does a journalist unpack a victim’s testament? How does a reporter stay clear of easy prejudices, where ‘kangaroo courts’ are seen as regressive and adivasis as backward?

Too terrible to be true

In her recently released ebook 13 Men (Deca), Sonia Faleiro investigates the January 2014 gang rape of a 20-year-old woman in village Subalpur, West Bengal.

Through her extensive reportage and investigation Faleiro exposes the pitfalls that journalists fail to avoid all too frequently. She stays clear of easy pronouncements and never succumbs to a simplistic understanding of right and wrong; instead she asks questions, listens hard, digs deep and unearths the story that did not make it to the headlines. At times she appears to be hedging her judgements. While this might frustrate some readers, it also disobeys the usual diktats of investigations, leaving it remarkably open-ended. Faleiro delivers facts to the reader, and then leaves it to them to draw their own conclusions. This is the kind of book that causes debate and discussions, and must be commended for that.

The book starts by chronicling the horrifying suffering of the survivor (called Baby in the book). As one of Baby’s assailants recorded her gang rape with his digital camera, 12 other inebriated men forced themselves on her in succession. Lalu Murmu, one of the assailants, is reported to have said, “If you do not allow me, I will insert my hand into your abdomen and bring it out and eat you raw.” This cruelty had an unlikely parallel across the globe.

On November 19, 2014, the American magazine Rolling Stone published a story titled ‘A Rape on Campus’. The report recounted the events of a night in September 2012 when Jackie, then a freshman student, is said to have been raped by seven members of a fraternity at the University of Virginia. The descriptions of sexual assault in 13 Men and ‘A Rape on Campus’ are eerily similar. “She remembers every moment of the next three hours of agony, during which, she says, seven men took turns raping her, while two more — her date, Drew, and another man — gave instruction and encouragement.”

‘A Rape on Campus’ made headlines, unfortunately for quite the wrong reasons; it became an example of ‘how not to do journalism.’ It was discovered that journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely had chosen not to interview any of the men Jackie had identified as her rapists. Sources that Erdely mentioned, which seemed to corroborate Jackie’s story, later confessed to have never spoken to her. After a four-month investigation, police officials claimed they had not found any evidence that would confirm the allegations Erdely seemed to have levelled in her report. Rolling Stone apologised for these ‘discrepancies’ and its publisher asked the dean of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism to audit its flawed journalistic processes. Steve Coll’s report is unambiguous. ‘A Rape on Campus’, he says, is a ‘story of journalistic failure that was avoidable’.

Baby, interrupted

Even after this, Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner referred to Jackie as ‘a really expert fabulist storyteller’. The accusation, though imprudent, helped amplify an already prevalent doubt — had Jackie ever been raped? By the time you turn the last page of 13 Men , you find yourself frustrated by a similar question. Unlike Erdely’s credulity, however, it is the credibility of Faleiro’s reporting that makes you examine Baby’s account of the assault.

‘A Rape on Campus’ is decidedly guided by the testimony of Jackie, and in the first part of 13 Men , Baby too is the unrivalled protagonist. But Faleiro’s access to Baby — she was the only journalist allowed to interview the rape victim in a high-security government shelter — does not persuade her to sacrifice objectivity. Though prominent, the survivor’s narration is judiciously interrupted by voices that corroborate as well as contradict. Faleiro carefully delineates the chain of events that Baby said had unfolded on the night of January 20, 2014. Enraged by her affair with a married Muslim man, the Santhal villagers of Subalpur had forcibly dragged Baby and Khaleque out of her house. They had tied the couple to a tree and, before the shalisi sabha (village council) could deliver its verdict the next morning, Baby alleges, she had been raped by 13 of Subalpur’s most powerful men. Faleiro never challenges this claim directly. She simply points out that the additional district and sessions judge who had sentenced the accused to an imprisonment of 20 years in September had done so without any medical or scientific proof. The lack of forensic evidence doesn’t just demonstrate the limits of a fast-tracked investigation. It also denies Baby an imperforate justice. Her statements still warrant a rigorous review.

Faleiro is wary of her counterparts in India’s mainstream media. Referring to the Subalpur judgment, she writes, “The decision didn’t make the front pages, like the news of the rape had. There had been other, widely-discussed sexual assaults in India in the interim, and people — or perhaps just news editors — were no longer interested in the destiny of some poor tribal men, or even of their victim.” In an interview to The Hindu , she is yet more candid. “What I discovered was that the case had been almost entirely misreported.”

Early last year, journalists were quick to claim that Baby’s gang rape was a punishment administered by a ‘kangaroo court’ in her village. The ensuing indignation reportedly compelled Mamata Banarjee to take action. She is said to have circulated an internal memo asking that the state police disband all village councils. Faleiro gives these parallel justice systems a context. Not only do they act as arbiters of everyday complaints, they are also a perceived solution to neglect and a defence against mineral-hungry land sharks. For many reporters who reached Subalpur, backwardness proved too convenient a stereotype. Their resultant assertions of a sanctioned gang rape were irreversibly damaging. The council had only levelled punitive fines. It hadn’t prescribed assault.

Step across this deadline

Much of 13 Men is an inadvertent correction of errors that journalists had made in their reports from Subalpur. The audit proves critical. Tribal traditions and governmental response aren’t the only issues at stake. When an instance of rape gains national prominence, the aftermath is felt across board. Faleiro writes, “It was only because of the medical student violated in the bus on that foggy December night that a tribal labourer in remote Subalpur received a hearing at all.” According to data recently tabled in the Rajya Sabha, the number of rapes registered in India jumped from 24,929 in 2012 to 33,703 in 2013. The 35 per cent increase demonstrates a new courage. Protests that followed the December 16 gang rape helped expose the much-neglected malaise of sexual violence. The tenacious coverage by India’s media only emboldened awareness. Journalists have doubtlessly never been more integral to the processes of transition.

Banned in India, BBC’s documentary India’s Daughter was accused of being part of ‘a conspiracy to defame India’ by Minister of Parliamentary Affairs M Venkaiah Naidu. The government and a section of activists were united in their opposition. Filmmaker Leslee Udwin, they claimed, had simply reinforced misogyny by interviewing an unrepentant Mukesh Singh. Though the convict’s views were reprehensibly violent, the ban on the film effectively made conspicuous a regrettable truth. India wasn’t prepared to accept the journalistic tenet that every story has two sides, and that in cases of rape, the perpetrator’s perspective is often unpalatable.

Faleiro in 13 Men shows that a recreation of events can be completed only by telling the stories of the men as well. She uses her 15,000 words to pack in the several details required to place Baby’s ordeal within a social and political framework. In the end, this specificity turns out to be crucial. Faleiro had one enviable advantage. She took eight months to report the story. In the process, she mended news that others were too eager to break.

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