Friday, 20 September 2024
Friday, 20 September 2024
Here are some indigestible statistics. The National Crime Records Bureau report of 2022 reveals that nearly 90 women are raped in India per hour. Conviction rates for rapes? Around 27-28 per cent. These statistics have remained more or less similar, year after year. Statements by political leaders, state apathy, judicial delay and police incompetence have also remained similar, year after year.
Our political leaders, also the lawmakers, play a tennis match between themselves for rape cases. BJP leaders have said women are not safe in Mamata Banerjee ruled West Bengal after the rape and murder of the 31-year-old trainee doctor at the government run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. TMC leaders in retort brought back the crimes at Hathras and Unnao to implicate women are unsafe in the BJP ruled states.
The Telegraph Online takes a trip down the trauma lane to highlight each incident that the political parties are bringing back to accuse each other and how our politicians and our policymakers have failed our half a billion women.
Hathras
In September 14, 2020 a 19-year-old Dalit woman was gang-raped in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh. She had gone to work at a Thakur community owned field. The victim’s mother found her lying in a pool of blood, with her tongue cut off. The victim struggled for her life for the next few days. On September 29, she died because of fractures and mutilations.
The police response? A hasty cremation of the body in the dead of night on September 30, against the family's wishes. On the contrary, the victim’s brother claimed they were locked up in their house.
The nation watched in horror as the authorities seemed more interested in covering up than delivering justice. Several politicians, including Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, slammed the Adityanath government over the death and the hurried cremation. Kerala journalist Siddique Kappan was arrested when he was on his way to report on the gang rape of the Dalit woman, triggering another row.
The UP Police claimed that he was linked to the radical organization People's Front of India and was trying to incite violence. After two years in jail, he was recently released on bail.
The CBI took over the case on October 10 and submitted its first chargesheet on December 2020 mentioning that the teen had been gang-raped and murdered by the four upper caste men.
In 2023, a court in Hathras handed convicted Sandeep Singh Thakur, who was sentenced to life imprisonment. Other accused, Ravi Singh, Ramu Singh and Luvkush Singh were let go.
Hyderabad
In November 2019, a 26-year-old veterinary doctor was gangraped and killed by four people. She parked her scooter near a highway toll plaza when two lorry drivers and their helpers deflated her tyre, dragged her into a bush, then raped and killed her.
The police arrested the four accused based on CCTV footage. There was public outrage on the issue and the chief minister set up fast track courts for trial.
The residents of the colony where the victim stayed locked the gates of the colony and held aloft placards that read 'No Media, No Police, No Outsiders, - No sympathy, only action, justice.'
On December 6, cops killed the four in a shootout. Allegedly, they were taken to the same spot where the victim’s body was found, for crime scene reconstruction, on the National Highway 44 near Hyderabad.
Later, the Supreme Court formed a committee, which submitted a report that the incident was a case of extra-judicial killing.
The police action was celebrated by many, pointing towards the deep mistrust in the legal system.
Kathua
In January 2018, an 8-year-old girl from the Bakherwal community, was raped and murdered in a temple in Kathua. Allegedly, to drive her nomadic community away from the area. The police took eight people, including two special police officers (for allegedly deleting evidence) into custody, while conducting a preliminary inquiry.
The Kathua incident took a political and communal tone when it was unearthed that Sanji Ram, priest at a local temple, was the main accused. Ram and two others were sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The state witnessed the rallies of thousands, grouped under the banner of the Hindu Ekta Manch, taking to the streets in Jammu in support of the accused. The rally was led by BJP leader Chaudhary Lal Singh. Singh had quit Congress in 2014 after the party denied him a ticket in the parliamentary elections and joined the BJP. In 2024, Singh was back in the Congress.
Unnao
In a sordid example of power abuse, Kuldeep Sengar, a BJP MLA from Uttar Pradesh, raped a girl who had come to him to ask for a job on June 4, 2017. The incident came to the forefront when the victim attempted self immolation outside chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s residence two months after the incident.
Sengar, known for somersaults in politics, having stints with Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party, Samajwadi Party, and then the BJP, showed how a powerful person can manipulate the system.
On April 9, 2018, the victim’s father was arrested under the Arms Act and died in custody, allegedly because of police brutality. Like a plot straight out of a Bollywood movie, a speeding truck rammed into a car carrying the victim, her two aunts, and her lawyer were on their way to meet the victim’s uncle who was lodged in jail. Her aunts died in the accident, while she and her lawyer were critically injured.
This event led to national outrage and public anger and finally, after two years of the incident, the BJP expelled him in 2019.
He was finally convicted and sentenced to 10 years' rigorous imprisonment in 2020.
Nirbhaya
On the night of December 16, 2012, a young woman and her boyfriend were looking for a way to return home after watching a movie at a multiplex in South Delhi. They boarded an empty bus. She was gang-raped in a moving bus in Delhi. The two were thrown out in the deserted ring road of Delhi.
Nirbhaya, the victim, survived her ordeal for another 17 days. She was airlifted to a hospital in Singapore. But she couldn’t be saved.
The incident shook the nation to its core. Her ordeal sparked nationwide protests and led to the introduction of stricter laws and government funds aimed at women welfare. The four men convicted of the gang rape and murder were hanged in the capital's high-security Tihar prison in the first executions in India since 2015.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had then posted "justice has prevailed" on his social media handle. He added that the country had to "build a nation where the focus is on women's empowerment".
Yet, a decade later, have things changed? Delhi still registers three rape cases daily.
Park Street, Kolkata
In February 2012, a woman who had met friends at a night club on Park Street, Calcutta was raped inside a moving Honda City that roamed around parts of Kolkata late night.
When she filed a case, the police mocked her and politicians questioned her character. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee said that it was a “Sajano Ghotona,”(fabricated case).
After a long and public battle, her attackers, who had alleged deep connections with politicians and celebrities, were convicted. She died in 2015 from a deadly form of meningitis.
Naser Khan, one of the convicts, completed his prison term and stepped out of jail in 2020. He was released around 400 days before the end of his term of 10 years because of his “good behaviour”.
Will the rape and murder of the 31-year-old trainee doctor get justice? We have to wait and watch. Till then, political squabbling over past incidents is what we have.
