Kathua Verdict - Justice For Asifa Poem by Bernedita Rosinha Pinto

She was gone far away from this earth
where there was only peace and love of God;
the verdict was what she would have never understood
as she was a child just eight years old;
but she had been thro' the aisles of brutality
which no child of her age would have ever foreseen.

Where was the truth in the meadows of reality
where were the eyes of those men who could not see a child
when upon her they played their game of lust and satiation?
how could those who heard of this incident not weep
how could justice itself give her back her lost life
which was so filled with innocence and purity in her age?

Had poverty been the chance for exploitation
that a temple priest who blessed worshipers
bestowed death upon a child who was just grazing a herd
near those mountains and he had no fears within him
for what he would do to a child who was so ignorant?

Or was it only that it was so written for her to die
when men had satiated their lust over a child
which brought to an end a simple life before
she could even know what it meant to be a woman?
a child she was, a child just eight years old!

And, as in that courtroom was announced that verdict
the bugle of justice rang so loud and clear
when she is not here to hear or know why,
can that bugle of justice blow so loud that a child will
wake up and feel the breeze of justice blowing gently
when in those meadows of silence she sleeps
where there is utmost peace and only the love of God?