26 Years Later, Son Convinces Mother to Take On Alleged Rapists

Rakhi was allegedly gang-raped when she was just 12 years old.

26 Years Later, Son Convinces Woman to Fight her Alleged Rapists.

(Photo: Athar Rather/The Quint)

Video Editor: Purnendu Pritam

“Why did you leave me? Why did you give me away?” – these were the very questions that echoed in a nondescript Lucknow home, when Rakesh (name changed) met the woman who birthed him, for the first time in 2007.

Aged 11, the school dropout couldn’t stop crying, when the foster couple under whose care he was raised, told him they were not his real parents. But while he was reunited with his biological mother, Rakesh still didn’t know who his father was.

“If you are my mother, then who’s my father? He continued to ask this question for several years. Till he was young, I would scold him and ask him to not ask such wrong questions.”

Rakhi, Rakesh’s Biological Mother.

Unable to share the truth with her son, Rakhi (name changed) would dodge existential questions from the quizzing teenager with great difficulty. As Rakesh grew up, his questions became more pointed, his eyes searching for that one word would establish the identity of his father.

A Harrowing Past

But, when in 2018, her son threatened to take his own life, Rakhi gave didn’t have an option and gave in. Rakhi narrated how she was allegedly gang-raped by two brothers – Guddu and Naki Hasan, way back in 1994.

The two allegedly violated her for over a year, following which she became pregnant and gave birth to Rakesh in 1996. But even before Rakhi could see her child, her mother had given him away for adoption.

“After my delivery, I was wondering how I can meet or see the child. I was told that my mother has given away the child. I cried a lot and tried asking my mother and sister the whereabouts of my child but they said that there was no need for me to know where he is.”

Rakhi, gang-rape survivor. 

Rakhi had moved on in life after getting married in 2000, following which she gave birth to a second son. However, two years later, her husband found about the first child and gradually ended ties with her.

Hopes Dashed

After trying to save her marriage for five years, Rakhi was asked to leave her in-laws house in 2007. She shifted to Lucknow with her second son. Surviving a gang-rape, being separated from her child, facing desertion from her husband and now left completely alone – the going wasn’t easy for Rakhi, who took up odd jobs to survive in a new city.

Around the same time, Rakesh’s foster parents came to know that Rakhi had moved to Lucknow.

“They said, ‘go stay with your biological mother’. I felt really strange, cried and then refused to leave. They said that they couldn’t keep me any longer as I had grown up and that they, too, had two children of their own to take care of.”

Rakesh.

But even after Rakhi opened up on her trauma, convincing her to act against her alleged perpetrators wasn’t an easy task for Rakesh. But Rakesh was relentless until she finally agreed and filed an FIR on 3 March 2021.

So far, her statement has been recorded and her medical examination conducted. The accused, however, are yet to be interrogated by the police.

(The Quint had reached out to the accused on their mobile numbers mentioned in the FIR. While one number is inactive, calls to the other was received by a person who claimed it was a wrong number and that he was in no way related to the accused.)