Poet Parth Bishnoi wrote, ‘She died screaming and scratching those rapists’ faces and her family will
die multiple times while finding justice in court.’ The rape case of the Telangana
doctor was not just gruesome but even more shocking for its planning. While
similar cases must be happening in lesser known parts of the country, it’s only
when it takes place in a city that it gets huge headlines.
Sahitya Akademi Yuva Sahitya Puraskar
winner Anwesha Singbal has been vocal about her views on women empowerment and
gender equality. “I find it illogical to make the difference between city and
village. This is happening everywhere. It does get noticed in cities. Nirbhaya
became a huge thing; people were protesting on the streets, social media was
abuzz with discussions but has it managed to stop or lessen what is happening?
Nothing has changed! Candle marches have become a mockery; ‘just because my
friend is going, I’ll go.’ ‘Somebody is speaking on social media, so I’ll also
comment on it,’” says Anwesha.
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She adds, “The root cause lies in the
inequality driven into their minds since childhood that women are inferior to
men. When we track the psychology of a rapist we should think why he was able
to do this to a woman? We often sideline it and say that he was disturbed or a
maniac but there are so many cases happening with proper planning. There are
rape cases happening in our own houses. How do we change their psyche to make
them think twice before raping anyone? It depends on how the society has been
brought up.”
Anwesha adds, “Our justice system is
failing us at every point. Our justice is so delayed that a woman will think
twice before going and complaining in a police station. The police themselves
will start questioning them in such a way that they wouldn’t want to complain.
As a lay person, the only change will can do is bring up our children properly
and telling them that there is no difference between genders.”
Meenacshi Martins, a noted actor, is also the Chairperson of the
Sexual Harassment of Women at the Workplace for North Goa. She shares her
experience: “Today, we are highlighting rapes that are happening in big cities
or which are politically or communally involved. Only when someone takes it up
and makes it big news, people jump into the wagon. Rape has multiplied and then
again it must be because of the awareness caused and people coming forward to
complain or the existence of actual rape happening in the society. Unfortunately,
I have come across rape happening across the socio-cultural barrier. Whatever
we read as front page news is indeed when it happens to prominent people or
religious people. Sometimes news is essential to make the required changes.”
Speaking about how the victim’s identity is important, she says,
“What I’m worried is that we are increasingly publicising the identity of the
victim, which is against the law and it is happening so often that it is a
matter of grave concern. That has to be upheld by the media. What happened in
Hyderabad was pre-planned and that’s why it’s getting more scarier, whether it
is a working class woman in a city or a working class woman in the fields. It
is dangerous and it has to be curbed.”
Martins also makes an important point about the swiftness of
closing cases which is non-existent unless there is a personal push. She
informed that she has filed one case of threat to rape in 2017 and that has not
come up in the court for the last 8-9 months. “They have dumped it in the court
where there is no judge. It is me, the chairperson of Sexual Harassment of
Women at the Workplace for North Goa, who was assaulted in Goa. My matter was
not taken up by the police till I approached the superintendent of police after
being assaulted and sustaining injuries. So you can imagine the plight of a lay
person in India. You can’t afford to go to complain”, she exclaims
You can imagine what a woman who is not educated, does not have
a support system or authority to approach the police goes through. I India is
lacking hugely in forensic evidence collection. It should happen in the
interest of justice. There should be no mercy; there is no relief and reform,”
says Meenacshi.
But Martins, after her own experience as well as what her
colleague Sabina Martins, another noted women’s rights activist recently said
at a press conference, will agree that Goa is not immune to the rot. In one of
the cases, the rape survivor was beaten by police, arrested and a false case
registered
In the other, the police destroyed evidence on the phone of a
young boy who was recording abuse against a rape survivor and registered a
chapter case against the rape complainant, according to martins
Animal rights activist Rakhi Puri feels that there is definitely
a hierarchy in terms of cases that get reported, highlighted and media coverage
versus the cases that don’t. “It is particularly not because of the region that
the women come from but based on caste. There was a Dalit girl raped and
murdered yesterday, there is no news covered anywhere. The Hyderabad doctor
victim’s case came to light as one of the shocking cases after the Nirbhaya
case. Yet, there was another body discovered the next day again a few metres
away from where she was burnt but it didn’t get that much coverage. We have to
be more vigilant in recognising these behaviour. Why are we normalising this
behaviour? This is an epidemic,” she says.
However, she fears that even vocalising against rape is
encouraging such behaviour. She added that it is not that our laws need to
change; our police personnel need to be educated. There are family members
waiting for justice but these men walk out on bail and are then garlanded by
politicians.
Puri
then echoes a rising sentiment “These are disturbed people and the only way to
stop them is to put them away for life. They cannot be allowed to walk out on
parole; they will perpetrate again and they cannot help themselves”
