Jaunpur case shows why incest survivors still fight alone

Two sisters in east UP lost their lives after sexual abuse by their father — one to neglect, the other to suicide. Their story shows very little has changed for survivorsEven if I die, what difference will it make to anyone,” Swati* would often rhetorically ask. The others around her could offer little hope or solace.Earlier this month, the victim of incest abuse from UP’s Jaunpur, died by suicide in a Varanasi govt shelter that had been her home for some years now. She was just a few days from turning 18.Swati was the youngest of three children born to a Dalit vegetable vendor. Following her mother’s death from a chronic illness, the children were left entirely dependent on their father. In 2022, she briefly ran away from home with a friend, a desperate flight from the trauma she faced at home. She was just 12. Her relatives found her, and brought her back home.On Aug 21, 2022, Swati and her brother walked into the office of the Jaunpur superintendent of police. They presented an application that exposed a horrifying domestic reality. She had been raped by her father for a year and a half and was under constant threat of death if she spoke out. More horrifying still was the fate of her elder sister. Swati testified that their father had repeatedly raped the older girl as well. The older sister fell severely ill and was locked in a basement, denied food and medical help. She died soon after. The father was arrested on Aug 24, 2024, based on the girl’s complaint. The accused was convicted with 20 years of imprisonment in 2025, but the legal battle took a toll on the girl. In the three years that the case was in court, she and her brother faced intimidation and pressure from their extended family to drop the case.With a hostile family around her, Swati’s only support was her brother who’d left for Mumbai for work. The boy she had eloped with when she was a minor also cut off contact over time. Earlier this month, as her 18th birthday drew near, there was growing fear that she had no one in the world who cared for her. She also would have had to leave the children’s home when she became an adult, but she did not have anyone to turn to. She instead chose to end her life. Swati’s life and death reveal the harsh reality that plays out in homes but that’s always brushed under the carpet. Her story is far more common than society cares to admit. Child sexual abuse is deeply stigmatised, but incestuous abuse carries an even heavier burden, as the family shifts from being a source of protection to one of predation.The Price Of Speaking Up“Survivors often have to face constant taunts, social stigma, and complete excommunication from the family,” says Nimisha Srivastava, executive director at Counsel to Secure Justice (CSJ), a nonprofit working on access to justice for child survivors of sexual abuse and children in conflict with the law. “The most heartbreaking thing for a survivor of incest abuse is when they do not find support from their mother or guardian.”Srivastava recalls a case where a mother, enraged by her daughter’s refusal to protect her husband, physically threw ash at the girl in court. In many cases, the mother often views the daughter not as a victim to be protected, but as a threat to the economic stability and social survival of the entire household. But, Srivastava adds, blaming the mother who may be economically dependent on the father or also a victim of domestic violence herself, is not the solution.Tripti* speaks in a frantic, breathless rush. Her words collide, scrambling to match her racing thoughts that she has struggled to quieten for nearly a decade. When her mind drifts towards the people she once shared a home with, her voice has a certainty: “I don’t want to go back to them.” In a world broken by systemic betrayal, this single conviction is the only certainty she has left.Tripti was 10 years old when the abuse began. Her mother had died some years before and her father turned from guardian to predator. It took her a year before she could confide in her two older siblings about the sexual abuse, but she was met with indifference. It was only when she gathered the courage to tell a schoolteacher that the machinery of the state intervened. In 2018, a case was registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, throwing her life into a whirlpool of confusion, stigma, and taunts.While Tripti was sent to a Delhi govt shelter, her siblings were packed off to live with extended family. Then began the second battle. Between 2018 and 2024, as her case wound its way through the judicial system, Tripti’s family phone calls and visits came to resemble a tense battleground. Her siblings and relatives poured their grief and social shame on her, sometimes urging, often demanding, she change her statement and withdraw the case. She did not buckle and eventually her father was handed life imprisonment in 2024. “I now know that abuse happens in a lot of families, but only a few like me have the courage to report it,” she says.What The Data SaysA 2024 study by Project 39A (now renamed as Square Circle Clinic) and Enfold Proactive Health Trust analysed 264 judgments to find that Pocso cases have a high acquittal rate. Of the cases analysed, 207 (78%) resulted in acquittals, while convictions for sexual offences were recorded in just 57 cases (22%). Of these, father, stepfather or mother’s partner was found to be the abuser in 11% of the cases. When broken down by the relationship between the survivor and the accused, the data reveals a stark paradox: the closer the perpetrator is to the child’s life, the harder it is to secure a conviction. The study noted a 54% conviction rate when the accused was a neighbour. This fell to 27% when the predator — either her biological father or the mother’s partner — lived in the same household as the victim. For extended relatives, it was a near-identical 27.5%.These low numbers reflect the immense, coordinated hostility a child faces from their own network when trying to sustain a legal battle.The institutional pressures are echoed by lawyer Arushi Anthwal, CSJ’s director of legal interventions, who recently represented a survivor who had been abused by her grandmother’s partner. The grandmother, determined to protect her partner, continued to pressure the child to recant. It took years of active legal advocacy and counselling to keep the child safe. Finally, in 2024, the legal team bypassed the family’s interference and secured a 10year prison sentence for the abuser.Confronting DemonsIn many homes, abuse continues unchallenged and unreported, says Anuja Gupta, founder of Rahi Foundation, that has been working for three decades with adult women survivors of incest abuse. “Incest abuse is more difficult to talk about than any other kind of sexual abuse because it gets normalised within the family,” Gupta says. Since it usually occurs in domestic spaces, it remains entirely hidden unless an outside witness intervenes. This lack of external validation creates a surreal, gaslit reality for the victim. “It makes the abuse feel ‘unreal’, as if the child is simply imagining it,” she adds. Without the language to articulate the trauma or the social confidence that others will believe them, children internalise the violation. “They rationalise the horror through self-blame: ‘I’m being abused because I’m a bad person.’ This psychological trap binds the child, ensuring their compliance and silence,” she says.According to Gupta, psychological damage does not vanish when abuse ends; instead, it migrates. Because a child cannot safely express complicated feelings of shame, guilt, and terror, the trauma embeds itself directly into their physiology. It manifests later in life as chronic physical illnesses, severe eating disorders, and patterns of deliberate self-harmMany survivors become overachievers, driving themselves to academic or professional extremes as a subconscious strategy to compensate for, mask, and distance themselves from the deep shame of the abuse. This physical lodging of trauma can lie dormant for years, only to resurface during what psychologists call an “anniversary reaction” — a major life transition, a broken adult relationship, the death of the perpetrator, or the moment the survivor has a child of their own and fears they will be preyed upon.Crack In The WallIn recent years there have been efforts to address the stigma and speak up. In India, politician Swati Maliwal and actor Khushboo Sundar, and in the West, talk show host Oprah Winfrey, actor Ashley Judd and author Maya Angelou have spoken about being survivors of incest abuse.Film director Saif Hasan, whose film ‘Yes Papa’, which tackled this difficult subject, was released in 2024, says the urge to say “ Khamosh raho (stay silent)” within families has to be fought. “It was by chance that I found out about a case of abuse within my family. I also realised that my aunt had told the survivor ‘ khamosh raho ’, rather than confront the perpetrator. Around the same time, two young sisters that I knew also spoke about being abused by family members. It stirred something in me, and I hoped the film would start a conversation and find a wider audience,” he said.In recent years, mandatory reporting of abuse by people in authority has brought to light many cases that may otherwise not have been reported. Presence of psychologists and counsellors in schools has also helped, but it’s a drop in the ocean. Besides awareness and advocacy, Srivastava says that there has to be greater attention paid towards creating a safe space for reporting abuse, protecting privacy, creating approachable police stations and strengthening one-stop centres that can support survivors.