She Ran Like a Deer, Chirped Like a Bird: Kathua, a Graphic Novel

The eight-year-old girl who lived, and was raped and murdered, in Kathua, is remembered in these illustrations.

An illustration of the eight-year-old girl, imagined here, sitting with her father and her beloved horses.

(Illustration: Erum Gour/The Quint)

(This graphic novel was first published on 5 May 2018. It has be reposted from The Quint’s archives ahead of the hearing in the case of the juvenile accused in the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua.)

This graphic novel is based on several news reports published in The Indian Express, the BBC and The Quint, after the gruesome rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua district of Jammu. While the world carries on, and the adults outrage and debate the polarisation/non-polarisation of such violence against women and girl children, an eight-year-old lived and died, far too young.

These illustrations are an attempt to portray her life from the point of view of her mother, her father, her siblings, her best friend, and of what they remember and recollect about the girl they describe as having been “a chirping bird” who “ran like the deer”.

She is referred to here as simply ‘Gudiya’.

Illustrations: Erum Gour
Text: Urmi Bhattacheryya
With inputs from Aishwarya Iyer