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| Photo: CNN |
“Don’t tell your daughters to dress well, teach your sons to respect women"- protestor
Rape in India is the fourth most common crime against women in India. According to the National Crime Records Bureau 2013 annual report, 24,923 rape cases were reported across India in 2012 (Wikipedia).
Several rape cases in India received widespread media attention and have triggered protests since 2012. This led the Government of India to reform its penal code for crimes of rape and sexual assault (Wikipedia).
On December 16, 2012, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student went to a New Delhi mall with her male friend. After seeing a movie, they boarded a bus at a major intersection. The driver of the bus and at least five other men on the bus were drunk at the time. These men dragged the woman to the back of the bus and beat her male companion.
Police say the men took turns raping the woman, going so far as to also use an iron rod to violate her. The men then drove around the city for almost an hour, dumping the two victims by the side of the road. The 23-year-old student died at a hospital two weeks later in Singapore. Her injuries had been so severe that some internal organs had to be removed.
On September 14, 2013, the court sentenced four men to death for the gang rape and murder of the student. Death sentences issued by Indian courts previously had rarely been carried out within the past decade.
However, the judge of this case, Yogesh Khanna, said that the crime fell into the “rarest of rare category”, thus deserving capital punishment. Two others have been accused, though one of these two men was found dead in his jail cell in March 2013 and another has been sentenced to three years in a special juvenile correctional facility, having been seventeen at the time of the crime.
This deadly assault has had a widespread impact in India, setting off demonstrations and igniting debates not only about the treatment of women in Indian society, but also about tougher punishments for sexual abuse.
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| Photo: CNN |
Especially after this New Delhi attack, protesters are demanding better treatment of women while condemning the apathy of the police and judicial system.
Furthermore, public servants (including but not limited to police officers) who “knowingly disobey” the laws required in an investigation are also subject to punishment.
It does not stop there though. While the laws have changed, the general objections to women and the prevalence of a perverse rape culture have not.
In May 2014, another alleged gang rape and murder occurred in India — this one involving two teenage sisters whose bodies were found hanging from a mango tree.
The two girls, ages 14 and 15, were killed in a village about 140 miles east of the capital New Delhi.
"They reportedly had gone to a field to relieve themselves but never returned," NPR’s Julie McCarthy says. "Like hundreds of millions of Indians, they lacked a bathroom at home."
The Associated Press says: "Hundreds of angry villagers stayed next to the tree throughout Wednesday, silently protesting the police response. Indian TV footage showed the villagers sitting under the girls' bodies as they swung in the wind, and preventing authorities from taking them down until the suspects were arrested."
Furthermore, when reporting sexual attacks, women are often subject to a process that “heaps shame, fear, and guilt on them,” the president of Apne Aap Women Worldwide, Ruchira Gupta said.
This is not an issue only present in India. The World Health Organization is now calling for an increase in global “women-centered care”. According to Dr. Margaret Chan, the WHO’s director-general, violence against women is a “global health problem of epidemic proportions” (Globalvow).
Video: CNN
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