"Many mistakes": how a mother confronted a broken system

Last month, Aisha Hanaan Ali shared her harrowing account of being dragged into a thicket and sexually assaulted in Villimalé. A 28-year-old math and music teacher, she still jumps at shadows while her identified attacker walks free. 

Despite the police admitting that they “made many mistakes” in handling her case, Hanaan and her family have been awaiting justice with little to no progress in the investigation.

The assault occurred in October 2023. 

The officer in charge of the case was changed two months later as the police acknowledged mishandling the initial stages of the investigation, the Maldives Independent has learned.

Throughout the past 18 months, Aminath Ali has been Hanaan’s biggest source of strength.

Her mother played the roles of first responder, medical helper, investigator and lawyer, taking charge of the situation, and using her voice, persistence and connections to ensure treatment for the physical and psychological harm.

Aminath, an educator and former state minister, was candid in the way she described how "loud" she had to be in the face of a failed system.

"As a mother, you don't want even a little bit of dust to fall on your child's eye...Naan is a special baby to me. Both of my children are special. I have been taking care of them on my own since their father passed away. This is the 12th year. Both of them have been my life since then…So we are a very compact family,” she said.

Close to midnight on October 20, 2023, Aminath was in bed waiting for a text from Hanaan to confirm her safe arrival at her Villimalé apartment. Instead she got a phone call.

"I heard her say 'Mummy' with a piercing cry and I immediately jumped up from my bed."

Aminath called her son and rushed to the ferry terminal with Hanaan’s friend. All throughout, she kept Hanaan on the line.

"I told her, ‘don't hang up the phone, do not hang up at all,’ because I know once I lose contact, I've lost her. So I stayed on the phone because if I can hear her, I can locate her. So I was on the phone, taking the ferry ticket, getting on the ferry, completing the ferry journey, getting off and I don't know how I got there running,” she recounted to the Maldives Independent. 

Aminath found Hanaan lying in the dark. To her outrage, the police were yet to arrive. When she saw that Hanaan's clothes were pulled down and ripped, Aminath ran into the nearby Villimalé hospital, shouting and "ordering" hospital staff for some bedsheets. On the way back, she snapped at a young police officer stationed outside the hospital.

When she returned, she found police officers from the Villimalé station at the scene. "None of those [expletives] came near to help us," said Aminath. "They are paid taxpayer money to help Maldivian citizens, not to stand there afraid of wrinkling their uniform." 

She shouted at the police officers until they agreed to use their vehicle to carry Hanaan to the hospital. 

More yelling and exasperation followed. In the next few hours, Aminath said she kept pushing for immediate transfer to the Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital in Malé.

"Even when the fajr [dawn] prayer time came, she hadn't been brought to the Malé hospital," she said, recalling the hours that passed as Hanaan waited for a forensic examination to collect crucial evidence. Aminath made repeated trips to the nurses' station, even offering to help police with paperwork to speed up the process.

When the family finally took the ferry to Malé early in the morning, a female police officer informed them that there were no police vehicles available. They would need to walk to IGMH, the officer said.

The suggestion enraged Aminath.

"There's no way that you are making my child walk. I don't care if it's early morning, I will [be loud] and wake everyone up," she warned the officer. A police car was eventually provided to transport Hanaan to the hospital.

On December 7, 2023, seven weeks after her daughter was raped, Aminath asked the investigating officer, Sub-Inspector Mohamed Irushaad, for an update.

"Both Hanaan and myself have gone to the police's family and child protection [department] and given our statements. As the officer in charge of this case, I have called you multiple times to find out who did this and how the investigation is going. But sadly, I have not gotten an appropriate response,” read the letter shared with the Maldives Independent. 

The letter outlined concerns over the failure to question two suspects identified by Hanaan and the police’s changing tune on security camera footage from the Villimalé ferry terminal. 

A week later, the investigation officer was replaced with Senior Sergeant Aishath Rafeefa. On the next day, Inspector Ali Naaif Waheed responded to repeated calls and invited Aminath and Hanaan for a meeting. 

During the meeting with Inspector Naaif, Chief Inspector Rifan Ahmed and Chief Inspector Zulaikha Rauzee, Aminath laid out all her concerns: the late response by the Villimalé police; failure to secure the crime scene; police officers urging Hanaan to take a shower instead of getting a rape kit as advised by the doctor; two male officers questioning Hanaan without her mother present; the investigating officer asking irrelevant questions about Hanaan's past marriage. 

"Many times during that meeting, they told us, ‘we accept that we made many mistakes in this case,’” Aminath noted.

Two days later, the new investigating officer took a new statement from Hanaan. This time, Aminath was allowed to accompany Hanaan, who identified one of her rapists from a lineup of photos.

On December 18, 2023, the police responded to Aminath’s letter with a brief note. Information regarding ongoing investigations could only be provided upon request by an institution with an oversight mandate, she was told. 

In a second letter dated January 23, 2024, Aminath reiterated her concern over the lack of progress. "I am once again bringing to your attention that it is now exactly three months since my daughter Aisha Hanaan Ali was attacked in Villimalé on 21 October and thrown in a ditch and the police service has not given us any justice,” she wrote.

Aminath stressed the police’s admission of mistakes in the investigation and complained about Chief Inspector Zulaikha addressing Hanaan harshly during December’s meeting. 

Sergeant Rafeefa, the investigating officer, was initially more forthcoming. But she stopped responding after the second letter was sent. Her last communication with the family was on January 29, 2024.

In April this year, Hanaan went to the police to report online harassment after she went public with her story. She spoke to the investigating officer and finally signed her initial statement from December 2023, Hanaan told the Maldives Independent.

More than a year later, the police have now got all the statements signed. The investigation appears to have resumed as the police have since sought additional statements from witnesses.