ISLAMABAD, May 8: There is a compelling evidence of extreme sexual violence against women in the recent Gujarat carnage that has gone grossly under-reported, says a report based on a fact-finding mission conducted by an Indian women’s panel.

The report titled: “How has the Gujarat massacre affected minority women?” is sponsored by the Citizen’s Initiative, an Indian NGO.

It contains hair-raising testimonies of a large number of women survivors who “had the courage to speak of the unspeakable”.

The terrifying accounts from rape victims themselves and from eyewitnesses “point to brutal and depraved forms of violence”, the fact-finding team asserts.

The pattern of violence against minorities does not indicate “spontaneous” action, concludes the fact-finding team, adding: “There was pre-planning, organization and precision in the targeting.”

The team at the outset of the report observes: “We have been numbed by the scale and brutality of the violence that is still continuing in Gujarat. Despite reading news reports, we were unprepared for what we saw and heard; for fear in the eyes and anguish in the words of ordinary women whose basic human right to live a life of dignity has been snatched away from them.”

One of the most horrific and heart-wrenching incidents of extreme violence mentioned in the report is of a nine-month pregnant woman Kausar Bano. Her belly was cut open and her foetus taken out with a sword and thrown into a blazing fire. Later she was burnt as well.

Hundreds of women were stripped, raped, burnt and left to die, the team was able to verify during its mission.

The report, dated April 16, 2002, and marked “For private circulation only”, reveals that among the women surviving in relief camps, are many who have “suffered the most bestial forms of sexual violence, including rape, gang rape, mass rape, stripping, insertion of objects into their body, stripping, molestations.

A majority of rape victims have been burnt alive.” Sections of the Gujarati vernacular Press, it maintains, played a dangerous and criminal role in promoting the violence, particularly in provoking sexual violence against women.

The 60-page report warns of an alarming trend “towards ghettoization of the Muslim community” in rural areas where women have been affected by communal violence on this scale for the first time.

“They have become a truly ghettoized people, in body and mind. Betrayed by neighbours and friends, left for dead by the state, they trust only each other,” is how the team describes the state of the victims and survivors.

“The pressure to conform culturally in order to survive has become a part of the fear psychosis of women,” notes the fact-finding team, saying that it heard many testimonies where rural Muslim women had to adopt “Hindu” attire, shun their Shalwar Kameez in favour of sarees; and wear bindis in order to escape to safety.

Pointing to the apathy of the state, the team observes there is no evidence of state efforts to help or protect women who have suffered enormous physical, economic and psychological blow.

“The state of the relief camps, as mothers struggle to keep their children alive in the most appalling physical conditions, is indicative of the continued abdication of the state’s responsibility.”

According to the report, there are over 100,000 refugees in Gujarat today, among them many women and children who have been hit hard by sudden economic destitution, having lost their breadwinners, and fear for their future. Their life savings are burnt.

Underlining utter helplessness, despondency and despair of the women survivors, the report notes: “There is evidence of state and police complicity in perpetuating crimes against women. State and police complicity in these crimes is continuing, as women survivors continue to be denied the right to file FIRs. There is no institutional mechanism in Gujarat through which women can seek justice.”