Rohtak gang rape: Why differently-abled women are more vulnerable

The reportage of the "Rohtak gang rape case" as it is called is no doubt horrific. All the reports have a common core of facts; a young Nepalese woman in her 20s was reported missing on February 1 from Rohtak and her body was recovered three days later on the 4th from some fields ten kilometers away from Rohtak. The woman had been brutally raped, key organs missing and objects inserted into her vagina and anus. The head of PGMIS Rohtak Forensic Science Department categorised it at the most brutal act of violation he had come across during his 29-year career which includes approximately 30,000 autopsies. All reports carry a reference to the similarity of this attack with the Nirbhaya case of December 2012.

In all this there is an aspect of this case that needs highlighting. The woman herself, as per newspaper reports was mentally challenged and had come to stay with her sister in order to get treated in PGMIS Rohtak. Only one report referred to the fact that she had a psychiatric condition. On reading the coverage on the case one is left wondering; whether there is a gross mistake in the reportage or a minor error. The gross mistake would be that a woman who has a mental illness and was being treated for it has been confused as a person with mental retardation. The other option is that the woman was mentally challenged along with a psychosocial disorder and the media simply has not picked up this issue of double disability.

Winding back to the Nirbhaya case the concerns expressed about women’s safety in the context of Nirbhaya, her lifestyle and her parameters, her right to be safe on the streets irrespective of time. It is interesting, but not surprising that no one has picked up the issue of the greater vulnerability of disabled women and the concomitantly the greater need for safety. There is nothing that signposts the reader to the world of this young Nepali woman clues them onto what kind of safety hazards and precautions are present and needed respectively to create a safe space for such women. In fact the media hasn’t even gotten past the first base – they haven’t even managed to accurately profile the woman’s disability.

To anyone who understands disability what is immediately clear is that she did have a psychosocial disorder since mental retardation is not a treatable condition. It would not be off center to say here that if not for the one article stating that she was receiving psychiatric treatment one would very well imagine that she was a mentally challenged woman receiving treatment for a physical ailment anything spanning a gynae problem through orthopaedics to ENT with any and everything else in between.

This woman was a person who lived and saw life through a lens that was off – mainstream. She, her circumstances and her environment need to be viewed through that same lens in order to begin the task of comprehending the safety issues involved let alone addressing them.

Safety is not one shoe that fits all issue. We understand this clearly when it comes to dealing with children versus adults; women versus men; boys versus girls; and even marginalised groups versus other population, but for some reason this basic fact seems to get lost in translation when addressing disability. Why is it that we don’t even care enough to understand who she was and how she and other countless women like her need an identity as a precursor to addressing their issues, safety or otherwise.