Mayam Imran
Last month a seven year old girl was undergone surgery for injuries she suffered while being raped with a water hose at a New Delhi hospital. Her mother was by her bedside after the girl underwent hours of surgery. A 21-year-old has been arrested in connection with the rape, which occurred in the district of Shahdara in the northeastern part of the city, said Meghna Yadav, a deputy commissioner with the Delhi Police. More recently, the rape and murder of an 8-year-old Muslim girl stoked furor and religious tensions after police found the girl’s body in a forest in the isolated Himalayan district of Kathua. She had been kidnapped while grazing horses January 12. The girl was drugged, gang raped and strangled before her body was dumped in the forest five days later, police said. Three police officers and a former government official were among the eight Hindu men arrested in the attack. Police in May announced they had arrested a primary suspect in the gang rape and burning death of a 16-year-old girl in northeastern state of Jharkhand. The man arrested was one of 20 accused in the attack. According to the National Crime Records Bureau of India, there were 39,000 rapes in India in 2016- a rate of roughly one rape every 13.5 minutes. The total marked a 12% spike over the previous year.
A renowned Indian journalist Barkha Dutt in her book titled “This Unquiet Land: Stories from India’s Fault Lines” also talked a lot about women issues. Even the educated and well off women are victims of harassment and abuse. It is ironical that Indian Judicial system in such cases does not give relief to victims as mentioned at page 7 of the book that when a low caste woman went to court against her culprits the judge acquitted the accused on the basis, “An upper caste man would not rape someone of a caste he considered untouchable”. So, there is no respite for Indian women even in the legal system of so called democratic and secular state. Miss Dutt said that women trafficking is rampant in India. According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, there were nearly 5,000 reported victims of sexual trafficking in India in 2013 alone (page 21). Female infanticide is a common practice. According to 2006 UN report everyday 7,000 baby girls were aborted or killed right after birth in India (page 4). Apart from other crimes against women, acid throwing, honor killings and dowry deaths are also very common in India.
With rape and molestation cases becoming common everyday not a single girl or woman in India can claim that she has never been teased or hooted at while walking on road. Girls say they have to think twice before walking out on roads alone. Rape cases in India have increased more than 10 per cent over the past five years, with weak laws, a lax justice system and insensitive policing blamed for the growing number. They show that in 2017, police across India registered 20,737 cases of rape compared to 19,384 in 2016. In the capital, New Delhi, there were 589 cases in 2017 and 623 in 2016. The states with the highest number of cases were Madhya Pradesh (3,010) and West Bengal (2,106). Women’s rights groups and commentators have argued that the number of cases was actually much higher, but that most victims are afraid to report a rape due to the social stigma attached to a sexual assault and police apathy towards registering or investigating such cases.
Apart from rape, women in India are victim of almost all kinds of violence such as honour killings, domestic violence, abduction, dowry deaths etc. The women living in insurgency infested areas are victims of duel violence. On the one hand they are victimized by army personnel and on the other by rival ethnic groups. Similarly, women other than Hindus particularly Muslims and Christians are victims of hate crime. Not all sexual harassment and rape cases are reported in India. But by considering the reported cases it becomes evident that in India a women is raped every 29th minute. The NCRB unearthed some extremely disturbing trends in India. Statistics suggest that in 2005 around 50 women were raped and 480 molested and abducted every day. The gravity of the problem is that Indian laws are not very strict for such type of violence against women. No capital punishment is awarded in such cases. Apart from harassment, throwing strong acids such sulphuric acid on the face of the girls and women is rampant in India. This is the most heinous and severe punishment deserving crime. There is no separate law to deal with acid attackers in India.
Dowry deaths are also frequent in India. This is the worst crime against the women next to rape. A married girl is burnt to death or killed or tortured by her in-laws and husband for not providing enough gifts or money to them by her parents. Every day 50 cases of dowry related violence are reported and every 3rd minute a case of violence against women is registered in India. Apart from these several women in the tribal areas of India are killed on the pretext of practicing witchcraft. Low casts girls especially Dalits in their childhood are made Devdasis to serve God in the temple and they have to leave their home and stay in the temple complex. These girls grew up in the temples and are exploited afterwards. Honour killings are widespread in India and 95 percent of victims of such killings are women.
There is a need that Indian government should take urgent measures to create awareness through education on the need to end such social crimes against women and initiate comprehensive measures to curb honour killings, acid attacking, rape and dowry deaths etc. In India, there is no respect for women, Dalits and minorities. The government needs to realize that acid attacks and other brutal assaults on women are a manifestation of an ingrained inequality. These attacks are not just about the women they target, they are also about the society that allows such attacks, the hierarchies it has internalized and the voices of protest it has silenced.
