At certain moments the current of history can almost be seen to turn back and plunge into an abyss. The Bombay High Court had set aside the anticipatory bail given by a sessions court to a person accused of repeatedly raping a minor girl of Class IX. The high court reportedly felt that the sessions court’s decision was ‘atrocious’. The physical restraints and threats during the serial violence allegedly drove the girl to attempt suicide. In spite of the gravity of the charges, including two under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, the sessions court gave the accused, a government servant, anticipatory bail; he had pleaded he would lose his job if arrested. This is just one instance of India’s surreal values. A government servant’s perquisites apparently extend to protection from the consequences of his alleged crimes, however violent and cruel, as long as they are perpetrated on women or girls. When the accused appealed against the Bombay High Court’s ruling in the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice of India reportedly mentioned that he should have thought before he seduced and raped a girl — he knew he was a government servant.

Among the cruelties and injustices towards women that activists have fought against for years is the convenient idea that if a girl is married off to her rapist, she is freed of stigma and the attacker freed of criminal charges. Shame, after all, is the girl’s alone. In this case, the girl’s mother, who prevented her daughter’s suicide, did not go to the police when the man’s mother promised that her son would marry the girl when she turned 18. The girl complained of rape when that did not happen. The acceptance of violence and injustice through marriage did not stop with the survivor. While hearing the man’s petition, the CJI reportedly asked him if he were ready to marry the complainant. The court could ‘help’ him then, or he would have to go to jail. The Supreme Court had, in some cases, ruled against mixing rape with marriage. Apart from demolishing women’s rights, this association reveals that Indian institutions have the weirdest ideas about sex and marriage. The court has given the petitioner interim protection from arrest for four weeks. The current of history is having a tough time.