'To all the women out there, the fight has just begun’: Nirbhaya’s lawyer Seema Kushwaha

Seven years and three months after the nation witnessed the brutal Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case, the convicts were finally hanged to death on March 20, 2020. Of course, the nation rejoiced because justice prevailed finally. Of course, the nation witnessed the struggle of Nirbhaya’s parents and their lawyer as every media house gave minute by minute details of the case. But will the nation really know what Nirbhaya's parents and her lawyer have gone through in the seven years of their battle as justice crawled to a snail's pace?

Now, two weeks after the rapists where hanged, Humans of Bombay has spoken to Seema Kushwaha - Nirbhaya's indomitable lawyer, who has shared her full side of the story, going back decades to the time when she was a child in a remote part of Uttar Pradesh when even surviving as a girl child was clouded by uncertainty, let alone being educated and becoming the lawyer who helped ensure that justice was delivered in one of the most heinous crimes to have besmirched this country.

Would the nation have witnessed the justice for Nirbhaya had Seema Kushwaha never stood up for the long and exhausting fight?

READ | United Nations Urges To Halt 'capital Punishment' After Nirbhaya Convicts' Execution

READ | Nirbhaya Case: Here's Why Postmortem Of Executed Prisoners Are Conducted

Over the course of six posts, Kushwaha expounds on myriad struggles, partially her own, and partly those that were encountered in the seven years since that horrific incident in Delhi. In the sixth and final post, she recounts the events of the last few hours before the hanging of the rapists - How the convicts' lawyer AP Singh went knocking at the Supreme Court yet again at midnight to the stall the hanging, made old arguments as the bench assembled and even attempted to bring the Coronavirus into play to delay the hanging.

 

READ | Women In Delhi Express Happiness Over Nirbhaya Convicts Hanging

READ | Nirbhaya Case: Cop Who Conducted Investigation Says 'hanging Will Send Strong Message'

On the eventual outcome, Kushwaha says that while she never met Nirbhaya in person, she still feels like she has a connection with her - as if Nirbhaya was her own sister. After the hanging of the convicts, Kushwaha says she received several threats, many so vile they mustn't be reproduced anywhere. Yet she is not bothered about those threats comments. What bothers her more is that ever since the hanging, she has also received more than 500 messages of women being subjected to brutality, rape and harassment yet not being able to seek justice.

It is to those women out there Seema says, 'We won't spare them, the fight has just begun'

 

 

 

 

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(5/6) “It was tough for me to even get a date in the Supreme Court–I desperately tried to get our matter heard, but in vain. The courts had a backlog of cases & I was even told that our case wouldn’t be heard before 2021–but how could this case be ignored? I made calls to advocates, aggressively pushed the registrar’s office & finally got a hearing after 1 full year. 2 years & 11 months after that; in 2017, the Supreme Court gave the same verdict–the convicts deserved to die. But AP Singh tried everything to delay the final execution. He drowned me in petitions–every time I won a round, there were 10 others that hadn’t even begun. He had found his loophole–the convicts had to be hung together or not at all. He could’ve filed petitions for all 4 of them together, but he filed each one after the previous one had been dismissed, prolonging the trial & our agony. It was a vicious cycle. Everyday they lived was another day of justice denied. It had been 6 years by then. Why were the courts being so lenient? Hadn’t they seen the rod that still gives me nightmares? Hadn’t they heard the nation’s outrage? Or had we normalised rape, no matter how brutal? Justice felt distant, but I found the strength every time I went to Jyoti’s room & saw a photo of her smiling. You know, after everything the only thing she told aunty in the hospital was that she wanted to live? That she wanted to see her torturers hang & become a doctor to help others? I kept looking at her photo & promised her I would make sure they hang–to prove that she did nothing wrong that night. That her being out at 8 pm with a male friend didn’t give them a right to rape her & take her life. I became relentless. I wrote to the President & PM, I questioned the delay in the media & fought in court like my life depended on it. It didn’t matter that it was my first case–for every ounce of experience that AP Singh had, I made up for it by not giving up. Finally, 7 years, 3 death warrants & countless delays later, our efforts paid off. Justice for Jyoti would be delivered on March 20th, 2020–the 4 of them were finally going to hang. But AP Singh hadn’t given up yet–he had another trick up his sleeve.”

A post shared by Humans of Bombay (@officialhumansofbombay) on Apr 2, 2020 at 6:35am PDT