For many generations of women, Bano has been an icon because of her perseverance towards justice in the face of everything. She could have given in to the powers that be and tried to live some semblance of life without taking on the fight. But she resisted all attempts to have her case silenced. She claimed for herself the right to appeal, to fight, to attempt to live with dignity despite the horrible sequence of events that changed her life forever. She still represents the resilience that we wish no woman should have to hold. This legacy will continue, despite the court’s insensitivity. She will remain among the feminist movement an icon, someone who chose to seek legal recourse. But it is gutting to think that this is how her story was allowed an end, that she must now live in the light of this fresh hell, knowing that the people who raped her are roaming free.

It brings up once again the issue of punishment by due procedure, and the trap that women and people from minority communities as well as marginalised people are forced to fall into…of seeking legal recourse yet never having the certainty of arriving at justice. This formed the background to the #MeToo movement, this total disenchantment with legal procedure, the fact that the systems feel designed to fail us because they are so infused by patriarchal conventions, so insistent on shaming and policing bodies that were born vulnerable, so loyal to those whose lives are marked by forms of impunity. For all those who didn’t have the courage to go to a police station and file a complaint against their rapists, I cannot imagine how this news must settle on their traumatised skin. Are we condemned to have to find ways of healing and reconstituting our selfhoods in the absence of any form of apology?

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I want to feel hope, but in this moment, there is only rage. It stirs my insides and makes my blood swell. My only hope, I suppose, is that I am not alone in this feeling. That you feel it too, and there’s enough of it to go around that could cause a seismic shift. Bilkis Bano deserves better and more.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.