Dhurjati Mukherjee
In India, as per a report of National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) 2019, a woman is raped somewhere in some state every 16 minutes; and daily, an average of 88 women are raped. At least one minor was arrested for raping a woman or a girl every eight hours in 2019, while over three on an average were held for assaulting a woman daily.
The data further revealed 2,750 juveniles were arrested last year on charges of rape, assault on women and attempted rape cumulatively. Of these, 1,383 and 1,327 were arrested for rape and assault respectively. The statistics are the tip of the iceberg as survivors and families of victims are reluctant to record their complaint through an FIR, as they would be aware, rather wary, of the various roadblocks. As has been generally found and agreed is that when someone tries to file an FIR against culprits belonging to the upper castes, there is a delay in filing it, the victim’s testimony is often changed while being written down and there is grave pressure for compromise. As such, convictions for rape stand at a miserable 28 per cent.
Experts have confirmed the immense difficulty in registering an FIR and this is evident not just in rural areas but in big cities too. Apart from this, the police machinery fails to take up cases in right earnest, obviously under pressure from political bosses. Further, the pendency rate of cases under the SC/ST Act is at 94 per cent.
Sadly, while atrocities have risen, the number of special fast-track courts has been reduced. In 2016, there were 195 such cases but it came down to 157 in 2018. Apart from those belonging to lower castes, specially Dalit and adivasis, (11 per cent of the total 32,033 reported rape cases in the year were from the Dalit community), women who are mostly poor face sexual violence in different forms and find it tough to fight the patriarchal system.
WHO statistics state that one-third of Indian women face domestic violence but less than one per cent report it. Indian women are 17 times more likely to face sexual violence from husband than others. And recent statistic has shown that during the first four phases of the lockdown, Indian women filed more domestic violence complaints than recorded in a similar period in the past 10 years. Moreover, it has been found that 86 per cent women who experienced domestic violence never sought help and that 77 per cent didn’t even mention the incident to anyone.
In August, a 13-year old Dalit girl was raped and brutally murdered for defecating in a farmland in a UP village in Lakhimpurkheri district. The Hathras victim was also a Dalit. Similarly, there are umpteen such cases, not to speak of the Nirbhaya gangrape. A systemic and structured sexual violence is something that cuts across social worlds and is not confined to such polarised spaces where physical violence against women is but a routine form of dealing with matters at hand, whether these be property or other disputes.
With Hathras hitting headlines, 100-odd retired bureaucrats recently wrote an open letter to the UP Chief Minister expressing pain at the “constant plumbing the depths of gravity and callousness in governance” and demanding punishment for the officials who had failed the alleged rape victim.
The political class shows little concern for the lower castes and the impoverished sections who live in abject poverty and squalor. The lack of education, and more importantly, awareness about rights of the opposite sex enable sexual assaults and rapes to become the order of the day.
Talking to psychologists and psychiatrists, it is evident that the basic cause behind the increase in rapes may be attributed to increasing aggression in human behaviour. Another trend that is manifest is the well-off upper castes youth, who have abandoned education and move about with financial support from their parents, are prone to show their power and fall for the opposite sex as they are sure that their family is above law.
There is an imperative need to spread awareness in society about basic tenets which one should follow to live in a cultured society.
Though there has been a perceptible increase in education, rape or even sexual assault on women and girls is a deep-rooted problem. A corrupt law-enforcement machinery as also the patriarchal system have been major hindrances.
INFA