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Can India hang Nirbhaya's rapists next?

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Sreemoyee Piu Kundu
Sreemoyee Piu KunduJul 31, 2015 | 14:02

Can India hang Nirbhaya's rapists next?

It’s been 24 hours since Yakub Memon was hanged and yet the dissection of the death penalty handed out to him for his role in the 1993 bomb blasts has not ebbed.

Social media is abuzz with theories on whether he has, in the end, paid the price for being a Muslim in a country that prides itself in being secular, yet turns every social, political, legal and criminal development into a communal debate. Terrorism wins TRPs. There is a lot of leftover anger. Mangled bodies of victims. Images of buildings and cars turned to dust repeatedly played – forcing you to choose a side.

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Make up your mind.

But what about the Nirbhaya rape case that shook the collective conscience of our nation? That brought men and women out on the streets of the capital? What about all the candlelight vigils and protest posters, blaming the state for failing to protect us as a gender demographic? What after the hullabaloo created over death row convict Mukesh Singh’s glaringly sexist comments recorded for a BBC documentary earlier this year?

"A decent girl won’t roam around at 9pm. A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy. Boy and girl are not equal. Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes. About 20 per cent of girls are good," Singh had said. His scathing sentencing of the entire female sex made every woman in this country squirm once again. Concerned, conservative Indian parents reminding their girls to cover their breasts, not wear short skirts, not talk to boys, not kiss, not go for movies after dark, call once they reached somewhere, anywhere, not hop onto a bus or a rickshaw.

Keep looking back over their shoulders. Or else…

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Singh who, in the same interview, kept referring to the bloodied gang rape as a mere "accident", added chillingly, "when being raped, she shouldn’t fight back. She should just be silent and allow the rape. Then they’d have dropped her off after ‘doing her’, and only hit the boy."

Even lawyers defending the criminals in court, like AP Singh, declared on camera: "If my daughter or sister engaged in pre-marital activities and disgraced herself and allowed herself to lose face and character by doing such things, I would most certainly take this sort of sister or daughter to my farmhouse, and in front of my entire family, I would put petrol on her and set her alight."

With the Nirbhaya case not moving an inch in the Supreme Court in the past year, are we allowing another form of rape – that of our basic human trust? In the Indian judiciary?

Will the government finally let us see acche din? When women aren’t sexually stereotyped, threatened and violated everyday – in crowded buses, in malls, in metros, in schools, in popular culture, in the darkness of our own bedrooms, in villages? When rape victims don’t have to suffer an archaic, financially derelict, under-resourced and indifferent criminal justice system that reflects a misogynistic and morally perverse cultural mindset – habituated to treating women like chattel?

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In 2011, 24,206 rapes were reported by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) – equivalent of one rape, per 20 minutes. But, according to police estimates, only four of ten rapes are even reported, due to fear of community shaming and stigmatisation of the victim. The number of courts, judges and prosecutors are also utterly inadequate, with trials dragging on for years, victims and witnesses being intimated and harassed, and the dropping of many cases even before judgment. A mere 26 per cent of rape cases tried in court in 2011 resulted in convictions, according to NCRB. An August 2012 study of 40 rape cases tried by district courts in Delhi that resulted in acquittals, revealed that more than half the acquittals were thanks to police failure to carry out adequate investigations.

A 2010 Human Rights Watch report, “Dignity on Trial” cited cases where victims were made to go from one government hospital to another for medical examinations, or subjected to uncomfortable tests. Others forced to sit for hours in bloodied clothes, even after such examinations, without being allowed to change or shower. Some are publicly identified as "rape victims" in hospital corridors. Most often no medical care is available such as treatment for injuries or infections, or to address the chance that the victim may have contracted HIV/AIDS or been impregnated. There is no concept of trauma counselling.

Forensic examinations too are problematic. The so-called "Two finger test", a primitive practice, banned in many countries, that involves a doctor inserting fingers into a victim’s vagina to determine if she’s "habituated to sex", is still being employed here, despite strict orders by the director general of Health Services in 2011 to discontinue the same. The WHO lays down clear directives for the medico-legal care of sexual assault victims, affirming that the health and welfare of the victim is "the overriding priority" – and yet in India we revel in the "re-rape" of the victim.

Is justice delayed then justice denied? In the end?

Have we failed Nirbhaya all over again? "Our judicial system has disappointed us. Our case is pending in courts for more than two years; it’s the third year now. It’s been [pending for] one year in the Supreme Court. Not even a single hearing has taken place and we have no idea when it will happen. If such a case is dealt with so lightly by a court, can you imagine what happens to the other cases?" says her anguished father.

Is all the public outcry and rage over rape actually impotent? Unimportant, in front of the more pressing 2G scams, coal scams and urgent bail applications of politicians? Is a woman’s indignity not a priority for our Modi whose robust social media campaign thrives on #SelfieWithDaughters?

Are we glad Nirbhaya is dead?

Last updated: December 03, 2015 | 13:05
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