Rapes are rising in Bengal, but Mamata is busy with Singur Dibosh
Last night, my college friend called for an Uber to go home around 11 pm, after a get-together of old friends in the heart of Kolkata.
"Think he's drunk, I don't know if I should take this cab," she said, as my mother, also with us, grew paranoid and kept asking our personal driver to talk to the driver first and ascertain if he was really drunk or seemed sober enough to trust.
We constantly kept advising my friend to talk to her husband on the phone on the drive back, as our driver tacitly threatened the cabbie that her husband was a high-ranking officer at Laal Bazaar police station - one of the city's more feared police depots.
As she stepped inside nervously, we instructed her further, to text or call us the minute she reached her doorstep. I kept my phone on till I heard from her.
Last week, one of my cousins was stalked by three young men on a deserted highway in the UK, as she returned from her high-flying IT job after servicing clients. They blew kisses to her and tried to overtake her sedan, while she tried to avoid direct eye contact, feverishly calling her fiancé living in another corner of the city, dialling a police helpline, next.
"She could have been raped, gangraped, like Nirbhaya," her father, an aging, widowed, retired army officer told my mother hysterically on a call the next morning.
Closer home, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Maharashtra reported the highest number of crimes against women in 2015, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. Uttar Pradesh reported 35,527 cases in 2015, or 10.9 per cent of such crimes in India. It was followed by West Bengal with 33,218 cases, or 10.1 per cent of the crimes against women in the country.
Maharashtra reported 31,126 such crimes. Assam and West Bengal have the highest rate of child trafficking at 11.1 and 3.8, respectively.
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| Why did CM Mamata Banerjee refrain from issuing as much as a statement 48 hours post the ghastly Salt Lake rape? |
May 2016 hauntingly brings back memories of the controversial 2012 Park Street rape case: a 25-year-old woman was brutally raped by four persons in an Uber car in the Salt Lake area - the same locality a cousin lives in. After taking turns to rape her, the accused reportedly pushed her out of the car.
On Wednesday, a 12-year-old pavement dweller was gangraped, killed and dumped into a canal in Topsia by two Ola cab drivers, one of whom had allegedly been booked for armed robbery recently and later released.
The duo was drunk and took turns to rape the girl in the back seat as they drove around the city. A news piece that shocked the city into a forlorn, familiar, shrouded silence. And yet, barely 48 hours later, the same populace is agog with some banal All India Trade Union Bandh, most shops and schools are shut and the roads wear a deserted look, with local parties clashing with one another.
TV channels are agog with reports of sporadic violence and journalists harassing commuters with inane questions about how they made it to work this morning and if they were anticipating trouble.
This is no country for women. And we, its women, aren't safe, anywhere. Not even in the city of our birth where, as youngsters, we roamed around in short skirts and partied freely, using public transport, hailing the big, yellow taxi.
Gone are the days when we owned our freedom. Nights where our body was sacred and unspoilt, when frantic parents wouldn't keep calling for our whereabouts, and we didn't need to know the number of the Kolkata Police women's helpline by heart. When there was no mobile phone to track rented taxis and social media check-ins - no constant looking back over one's shoulder.
And yet, I can't help but wonder if we are gradually growing a tad too immune to sexual violence - why is it that after just one day, news about rape is somewhat stale and the ruling party TMC is busier celebrating Singur Dibosh (a tribute to martyrs of the anti-land acquisition movement), carrying out triumphant victory marches with green vermillion smeared on their proud faces, instead of hanging their heads in collective shame, given the recent sexual atrocities and fear in our hearts.
Why does chief minister Mamata Banerjee, a woman herself, prefer to keep silent and refrained from issuing as much as a statement 48 hours post the ghastly Salt Lake rape?
How come the crime investigation department of the state police failed to make headway in the alleged rape of a 71-year-old nun at a convent in Ranaghat area of Nadia district even five days after the incident?
Despite the demand for justice growing louder, the CM conveniently decided to hand over the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation in March.
Why, Mamata Banerjee, are the main accused in the Park Street rape case still absconding?