Dead girl's struggle that continues as a mass movement

Chandigarh, Sep 7 (UNI) Unlike Jessica Lall, who denied liquor to her alleged killer at a bar, 17-year-old village girl Kiranjit Kaur was raped and buried alive by some influential land lords on her way back from school.

Capturing the entire episode of Mehal Kalan village in Sangrur district and its aggressive fallout on the rural people's psyche in his 78-minute documentary, young film maker Daljit Ammi has a grudge- ''the Kiranjit case was not picked up by the national media, like the way Jessica Lall case was covered''.

The incident, which took place in July 1997, had caught the people's ire as the police initially refused to book the culprits till public pressure was mobilised following the discovery of the girl's buried body from the field of the culprits.

''The hair of the culprits were found in the fist of the dead girl who had struggled, and thus, she was declared as a 'martyr' by the villagers,'' the narrator's voice echoed in the film.

The film narrates a long story of how the mass movement led to the conviction of four of the six accused by the Barnala sessions court in 2001 and action against the erred cops, and later the Punjab high court's upholding the judgement and directing for a compensation of Rs 50,000 per head for the victim's family.

But this all came at the cost of a false implication of three of the 'Kiranjit Action Committee' activists in another murder case during the long legal and political battle, still continuing for their acquittal.

Coincidentally, the three had been implicated in the murder of Daljit Singh, the grandfather of the two main accused in the Kiranjit Kaur case.

Two of these three activists are presently on bail, while it has been a year now that the plea for the bail of the third member was pending for hearing in the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

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