Not shocking anymore but feel pained and stranded to read about rapes on the girl child. A 14-year-old girl was found raped and killed by unidentified persons in her house. The girl was alone at her home in the power loom town of Bhiwandi at the time of the incident. When the victim’s elder sister returned home in the evening, she found her sister raped. The accused entered the house, raped the girl and then severely beat her and drowned her in a water tub. As usual, the body was sent for post-mortem and based on its findings, the police registered the rape and murder offence against some unknown persons. No one knows the fate of this case, a child lost her life on a humiliating note, and accused just did what he had to and remained unknown. This is what is happening everywhere in India.
Nearly 2,00,000 women and children are currently missing in India. Looking back at the latest data available, in 2016, India recorded 106 rapes a day and four out of every 10 victims were minors. Another shocking fact that the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)’s “Crime in India 2016” report reveals that in 94.6 per cent cases, the culprits were none other than the victim’s kinsfolks including brothers, fathers, grandfathers, sons, or acquaintances. The report showed that in the year 2016, a total of 38,947 cases of rape were registered in the country under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) as well as the Section 376 and other related sections of the Indian Penal Code. Among these 38,947 cases, in 36,859 matters, accused are related to the victims.
The year 2018 has become the worst for the children in India. Kids are supposed to be safeguarded. They’re supposed to have a happy childhood, but in India, children are scared and they should be.
How do you equip children to protect themselves? How do you protect a child? The situation in India is quite grim! India’s conviction rate for rape, at 25.5 per cent, remains low compared to all cognisable crimes – those that do not require a magistrate’s permission to investigate – under the Indian Penal Code (46.9 per cent in 2015). Declining conviction rate in rape cases ordinarily means lesser number of registered cases could be proved in the court, and this gives rise to the suspicion that, maybe false cases are also being registered. Children are killed, pushed into flesh trade, used for porn, they are forced into begging, if not missing then they are raped in their homes, schools, playgrounds, or whichever places possible. Nothing could really stop the crimes against girl child and women in India.
In 2015 alone, some 73,242 women have gone missing (until September) of which only 33,825 have been traced so far. That translates to roughly 270 women going missing every day. After adding the backlog from 2014, the number of women who are still untraced in India as of 2015 stood at 1,35,356.
The case of India’s missing children is no better. In 2015, until September, there were 35,618 cases of missing children, which translates to 130 cases of missing children daily in India. Of these, only about 19,849 children were traced. After adding the backlog from 2014, 61,444 still remain untraced. According to the data from the NCRB, trafficking of minor girls and women constituted about 76 per cent of human trafficking cases in India over the past decade. Based on the case studies and NGO interviews, the diversity of India’s states and territories leads TIP to differ greatly based on the characteristics of a given region. NGOs indicated that trafficking was prevalent in destination states because of high inflows of migrants, high demand for sex workers, generic gender/caste issues, a lack of community responsibility for social security and welfare, and the absence of a strong legal framework. Maharashtra topped the list of states with the highest cases of missing women. Of the top five states with the most cases of missing women, four have some of India’s biggest metropolitan cities. These include Maharashtra (Mumbai), Delhi, West Bengal (Kolkata), and Karnataka (Bengaluru). Families are steadily getting smaller in India but in many homes the missing children are girls. Around seven million girls go missing in India every decade, with the fall in sex ratio corresponding with rising affluence, increasing the availability of sex-determination technology and declining family size.
India also has the world’s highest newborn deaths, more than 7,00,000 babies dying within the first 28 days of life every year. Here again, more boys are likely to be saved than girls. Sex-selective abortions are leading to India missing 7 million girls in each decade. How many children are saved depends on the last-mile reach!
In India, you ask any girl child, young or old woman, they would tell you at least one incidence of outrage. Every female of this country has one story to share about humiliation, molestation (direct-indirect), assault, and sometimes even brutal abuse. Directly or indirectly everyone is abused at one point of time. What more one needs to understand the fate of female in this country, and how long one has to live with this insecurity? Sometimes they go missing, sometimes they are pushed in horror or they are raped and murdered. In spite of living in so much moral custody, no one can guarantee her the safety or dignity. What kind of a country are we living in and what kind of representatives are we electing for our welfare?
Hope we gear up now.
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