A brutal and incisive look into the labyrinthian Indian justice system, Nisha Pahuja’s documentary “To Kill A Tiger” follows the aftermath of a horrible sexual assault in Jharkhand. While coming home from a wedding one night, 13-year-old Kiran (a pseudonym, though after viewing footage at the age of 18, she chose to reveal herself in the film) was viciously attacked by three boys known to the family, who took turns raping her. After a panicked search for her, her father, Ranjit, reaches out to local leaders and the police. They know who perpetrated the crime, and the three boys are quickly arrested. What happens next reveals how the village responds to such accusations of sexual assault and the ways in which reactionary politics are reflected in small communities.
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Shortly after the arrest, the village descends into tribalism, with many turning against Ranjit for daring to pursue charges against the boy, refusing to let his daughter feel the shame associated with the assault, and, importantly, exposing the deeply patriarchal system that perpetuates this type of sexual violence. Why couldn’t he, as many suggest, just marry off his daughter to one of the boys? It’s been done before and usually acts, as many argue, as a community-led solution. Or, as a number point out, why was Kiran alone at night with the boys, anyways?
These types of critiques are not even limited to the men of the village, as the boys’ female defense attorney rhetorically asks, “Why were you there after midnight? This isn’t the West,” before offhandedly noting she couldn’t even “trust my own son” in such a situation. Her reaction serves as a microcosm for the way most respond, blaming Kiran for her actions and taking the onus of responsibility away from the boys.
These moments serve to incite the audience as we stare in disbelief at the victim shaming that is so ingrained in the village’s response and the court system. But Pahuja wisely never turns the narrative into an abstracted polemic, never losing sight of the toll that such a sustained resistance takes on Ranjit and Kiran.
He ends up in debt, ostracized, and eventually develops a drinking problem because of his continued refusal to cave to village pressure, even disappearing from the court proceedings for a stretch. She is constantly asked to relive the experience, retelling the story over and over in the face of a judicial system that questions her at every possible chance in order to get some sense of justice hopefully.
And when that justice comes, like anything, it doesn’t feel complete. The film openly wonders if this emotional journey ends up making a major difference when the other villagers don’t seem moved by such a stance. They repeatedly take offense to the idea that outsiders — the filmmakers and also the advocates at the Srijan Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to women empowerment and gender justice that takes an interest in the case — could understand their way and the verdict that comes down feels more like an anomaly than a larger shift towards something.
By the end of the film, an on-screen text notes that a woman is raped every 20 minutes in India and that the boys are appealing their verdict. What, if any, changes Ranjit and Kiran have accomplished in the short term is left dangling. But, their commitment to the truth and to the idea that there needs to be punishment for these types of acts, in the larger sense, lives on. It’s a powerful, infuriating document of a family’s resilience in the face of massive communal pressure and to the notion that these types of small, necessary shifts can add up. [A-]
