On 22 September 1992 in a small village in Rajasthan, a grassroots worker named Bhanwari Devi was stabbed by injustice for doing her job. She had tried to stop a child marriage. For that she was brutally gang-raped, in front of her husband. What followed was a long fight, not just for her own justice, but justice for countless women she didn’t even know.
At first, local authorities refused to act. The medical reports were insensitive or dismissive. The police delayed investigations. Hospital staff and police officers treated her with cruelty, asking her to submit a blood-stained piece of her husband’s cloth instead of proper evidence. Her lehenga was demanded as proof. She was left with nothing but stigma and her husband’s torn clothes.
Some acquittals followed. The trial court cleared all accused due to weak or delayed evidence. Higher courts failed to secure her justice. Yet the outrage spread. Groups of women’s rights activists across the country rallied. They filed a petition in the Supreme Court under the banner Vishaka and Others. They asked for guidelines to define sexual harassment, to prevent it, and to provide redress.
In 1997 the Supreme Court issued what are known as the Vishaka Guidelines. These guidelines made clear what kind of behavior counts as sexual harassment at work. It demanded institutions set up safe structures to handle complaints. It recognized that sexual harassment violates equality, dignity, and the right to a safe workplace.
It was two decades later, in 2013, that the Parliament passed the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act. It took the principles in Vishaka and gave them the force of law. Now any workplace in India with more than ten employees must set up Internal Complaints Committees, conduct awareness programs, and resolve complaints in defined time frames.
Bhanwari Devi did not ask for a movement. She only insisted that justice be done. And what she ignited shows how one person’s suffering can reshape legal structures for millions who follow.
What kind of courage waits in your silence?