Crying shame

Joginder Singh, IPS (Retd)
Having spent nearly four decades in the Indian Police, after independence, I have seen that rapes are a common occurrence and feel that the rape crime against women has been taken very lightly by the Government. Neither the politicians nor the public except those affected or their relatives take it seriously. There is no country in the world which has stopped rapes from happenings. A lot of research has been done in this field, and one research says that
1. That rape is not a sexual act. That it is an act of power. Of entitlement.
2. That there may be other emotions involved, such as anger or mental depression.
3. That the incidence of rape in a society or culture is a function of what’s commonly perceived to be a man’s ‘entitlement’ in that society and avenues it provides for discharge of the anger when such expectations are not met.
4. They happen in all cultures in every country in the world. And they have been happening for a very long time.
Vide Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, the Government was forced to bring up a law and pass in the Parliament in repose to the popular demands and protests all over the country. It happened after the anger in the country erupted after the rape and death of Nirbhaya , that the death penalty was also included for the rapists.
Only two persons involved in terrorism, one of attack on Mumbai in 2008 and the other of attack on Parliament, in 2001 were hanged since 1996.
Rape and violence against women are a massive problem in India.
According to the country’s National Crime Record Bureau, crimes against women have increased by 7.1 percent since 2010.
The number of rapes reported has also risen. Nearly one, in three rape victims, in India is under the age of 18.
One in 10 are under 14. Every 20 minutes in India, a woman is raped. There have been cases where women have been given the punishment of rape by the village Panchayat (A 22-year-old woman is critical after being allegedly gang-raped by 13 men on the orders of village elders in India’s eastern state of West Bengal, according to a report
The elders meted out the rape as punishment for the woman’s involvement with a man from another community. The 13 men involved in ordering the punishment and in the rape have been arrested,
In some cases, women have been killed by their own relatives, in the name of honour killings. Mind you, Women form 49% of the electorate. Yet our Netas, do not think twice, before making outrageous remarks, on rape, as they know that no woman would go against the wishes of male members to cast vote in favour of a particular political party or an individual.
Child Rape
Another form of rape is of small infants from one year to girls less than 10 years. A 56-page report titled “India’s Hell Holes: Child Sexual Assault in Juvenile Justice Homes” by the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), citing National Crimes Record Bureau statistics, says that a total of 48,338 child rape cases was recorded from 2001 to cases in 2011 Infact, it would not be wrong to say, that women have become an easy game even in uniformed services In a complaint received in 2013, in the Capital of India, policemen were accused from showing pornographic film, to the use of filthy language were among the 62 sexual harassment charges levelled against Delhi Police personnel.
An Assistant Commissioner of police was “compulsorily retired”. In three other complaints (two from anonymous sources ) received in 2013, the PCR branch, it was alleged that women staff were sexually harassed and experienced “indecent behaviour” from their male counterparts.
Five Indian Navy officers were arrested in the early hours of April, 27th. 2014, Sunday on charges of molestation, after they allegedly harassed and assaulted a woman in Mumbai on 26th April, 2014.
The five men, all under the influence of alcohol, had then chased the woman, a banker from Gujrat and her businessman husband, in two autorickshaws before the police caught them.
A 28-year-old lady teacher on 25th April , 2014, was gang-raped by four people inside the classroom of a primary school in Bundi district, in Rajasthan.
In an other case, a 29 year old house wife, in Thane, Maharasthra filed a case in April, 2014, against her husband, for forcing her, into having sexual relationships with two unknown persons in exchange of money.
Leora Tanenbaum says in “Slut; Growing Up Female With A Bad Reputation; Rape is a thousand times worse: The ultimate theft of self-control, it often leads to a breakdown in the victim’s sense of self-worth.
Girls who are molested, for instance, often go on to engage in risky behaviour—having intercourse at an early age, not using contraception, smoking, drinking, and doing drugs. This behaviour, it seems to me, is at least in part because their self-perception as autonomous, worthy human beings in control of their environment has been taken from them.”

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