A class 12 student was set on fire by a stalker on Tuesday morning in Dumka town of Jharkhand.

Shahrukh, a laborer, had been stalking and harassing the girl for 10 days, after having obtained her mobile number somehow. On Monday night, he called and threatened to kill her if she did not talk with him and become his ‘friend’.

The frightened girl finally informed her father who said he would approach Sharukh’s family the next day. The family went to sleep after having dinner.

“On Tuesday morning, I experienced a sensation of pain on my back and could smell something burning. I found him (Shahrukh) running away when I opened my eyes. I started screaming in pain and went to my father’s room. My parents doused the fire and took me to the hospital,” the girl spoke with great difficulty while the police recorded her statement. 

The 19-year-old was admitted to Phulo Jhano Medical College and Hospital in Dumka in a critical condition with 90 per cent burn injury, police said. The accused, Shahrukh, has been arrested.

The hospital’s medical superintendent Anukaran Purty said the girl, who is in a critical condition, still managed to give her statement and signed it. “In such cases, the situation deteriorates suddenly,” he said. Dr Purty added the Dumka hospital didn’t have the burn injury specialists and the patient should be taken to Ranchi or Jamshedpur, the closest locations which will have hospitals equipped to handle such severe burn injuries. Ranchi is 250km from Dumka, Jamshedpur is 275km.

“We are waiting for their (her family’s response),” he said. One hopes that the Hemant Soren JMM-Congress government at least provides the best treatment to the victim.

“Shahrukh allegedly poured petrol on the woman from a distance and set her on fire. The accused is a construction worker,” town police station in-charge Nitish Kumar told PTI.

As per one news report (archived here), the girl is a Hindu.

Jharkhand is home to some of the most mind-numbing instances of violence and misogyny in the entire country. Another similar case which HinduPost had covered extensively in 2018 where a 15-year-old Hindu girl was gang-raped by 3 Muslim brothers who then set her on fire and murdered her, barely got reported by national media. But since the state is currently ruled by a ‘secular’ politician, he gets a free pass from media elites whereas BJP’s Raghubar Das was hauled over the coals after a thief was caught red-handed and thrashed by poor villagers.

Recently a video of a boy assaulting a minor school girl in Pakur, Dumka district, had gone viral forcing CM Hemant Soren to take note. That video was being circulated with the tagline ‘adivasi girl attacked’ before it was revealed that both the girl and boy are from vanvasi (tribal) communities.

While the nation’s elite are frothing at the mouth and trying to outdo each other in expressing their moral outrage over the recent remission of a sentence from a 20-year-old riot, grooming jihad victims like this girl from Dumka are reduced to mere statistics.

No one bothers to ask why a community, which we are told is a ‘frightened minority’ facing ‘imminent genocide’, is so emboldened as to prey on ‘kafir’ girls that their maulanas tell them are ‘characterless’ as they are not dressed in hijab and burqa as ‘good, God-fearing’ girls ought to be.