‘Does a Dalit’s life have no value?’: The murder of a teenage girl in India

Family members of the 14-year-old say she was raped and murdered. As they seek justice, social tensions erupt in their village.

Muzaffarpur, India – As protesters took to the streets of Kolkata to demand justice for a trainee doctor who was raped and murdered on August 9, 55-year-old Nirali Kumari* gasped for breath in her small wooden hut 480km (300 miles) away. She hadn’t left her home – or even her bed – since the body of her 14-year-old daughter was found on the morning of August 12 – naked, bloodied and with her hands and legs tied.

Kumari says “six men wielding knives” entered her home on the night of August 11. “[They] threatened us and kidnapped my daughter. She was sleeping right here, with her elder sister,” she adds, before breaking down.

When Al Jazeera first met Kumari, she was so overwhelmed by grief that she had not eaten in the five days since her daughter’s body had been discovered. Her wrist was bloodied and bandaged from the cannula feeding her fluids. She fainted from time to time in the suffocating heat of her hut, even as a relative waved a handheld fan over her.

Kumari’s daughter’s body was found in a paddy field near her home in the area of Paroo in Muzaffarpur district, Bihar, one of India’s most populous states.

The murder of the teenager – who belonged to the Dalit community, the least privileged in India’s complex caste hierarchy, a position that has enabled its persecution for centuries – has put the entire village on edge.

Kumari’s family lives in a village in Paroo, located nearly 80km (50 miles) from the state capital, Patna. The village is home to fewer than 5,000 people and is surrounded by vast paddy fields. Colourful cement houses belonging to the dominant Yadav community, an