Every day we see rape incidences making headlines, nowadays even dogs are not safe. I was saddened to read about 41-year-old man Ram Naresh who raped a dog for three consecutive days inside a toilet of a housing complex in Mumbai. He works as an auto rickshaw driver during the day and as a security guard at night for a private security company. The incident came to light when a resident became suspicious and scanned the building’s CCTV footage, which showed the accused sexually assaulting the dog. Ram Naresh used to lock himself up with the dog for five to seven minutes each time he entered the bathroom. Dog’s medical tests proved that it was repeatedly assaulted. The dog’s vulva was congested and swollen after the attack, according to a medical report. The dog was in a state of shock and had a lot of bleeding. We human beings can scream and express, but these animals they have to undergo such tortures silently, and no one is much bothered when animals get raped.
In the month of August this year, a taxi driver in Delhi has been accused of raping a female puppy, which later bled to death. Thirty four year old Naresh Kumar from the city’s Narayana area had boasted about the incident before him and also led him to the carcass. A post-mortem report confirmed rape and death due to excessive bleeding from private parts as well as shock. His wife informed media that he was a pervert and also tortured her. The father of two daughters allegedly broke her arm for saying so. Similarly, a psychopath, Nakul Mishra, was found stabbing dogs to death at the Green Park Metro Station in Delhi, and an unemployed Dwarka resident chopped off the hind legs of a puppy with a hacksaw when it scratched him last year. In October 2016, Hyderabad police arrested a man for killing and raping a female dog.
Globalisation has modernised India into a more liberal country where homosexuality, live-in relationships, pre-marital sex and “love marriages” have gained social acceptance. Despite changing mores, Indian rape laws are very narrow and limited. Sexual abuse of animals and other forms of cruelty are not much reported or taken into account. Every hour one hundreds of animal go through different sorts of cruelty. There are no provisions made to track animal cruelty. A study has shown that the 20 per cent of children who sexually abuse other children first abused animals. There are high rates of sexual assault of animals in the backgrounds of serial sexual homicide predators. Sexual abuse of animals used to be covered under sodomy laws, but many of those laws have been repealed since the 1950s in order to keep up with modern views about sexual practices between consenting adults. Not all states realised that repealing sodomy laws would leave bestiality a legal practice.
Much as polite society may wish not to acknowledge it, inhumanity exists. An Internet search for cruelty brings up recent arrests, where to find it, chat rooms, videos etc. An old saying, “where the men are men and the sheep are nervous,” indicate that sexual relations between people and animals are neither new nor rare. The growing perversion across the earth has resulted many such incidents, world has halted and abusing weaker section, be it woman or an animal. Their sexual urges are stronger than the human in them. These people are dangerous to humanity; many of them go unnoticed and enjoy doing mercilessness to animal until they get caught.
Where are we heading? Savagery carries human health risks, too. Animals can carry human sexually transmitted diseases, bacterial or parasitic infections of the genital, intestinal or urinary tract as well as cancer-causing viruses such as human papillomavirus. Why these men fail to understand all these living creatures get wounded and they have no right to do so. These people are one of the lowest individuals on the planet. They use their power over weak people to dominate them sexually. What they do causes irreversible damage and trauma to the victims and a lot of offenders usually get away with it. It’s a crime that is showing no signs of dispersing and a lot of animals and women fall victim to it.
Respecting people’s boundaries is one of the hallmarks of healthy mental wellbeing. The majority of the criminals are acquitted or not even tried for their crimes, which has two implications: first, many criminals are not being held responsible for their actions and second, if sex criminals are not convicted and punished, there is no form of deterrence for future crimes.
The general perception in society is that as a country develops and grows economically, it becomes more modern and progressive. However, as India grows and emerges as one of the top developing countries in the world, as it educates and employs a greater percentage of women, the perception of women and protection for women’s rights remain relatively unchanged.
Many politicians have taken a stance against the violence and vowed to push for stricter punishments and reforms that will improve safety for women. Yet, women are viewed as objects rather than as equals. Furthermore, corruption within the government often leads to many issues being ignored and overlooked, including punishments for crimes. While there is no easy solution to the issue of women and their image in India, deliverance of justice and societal attitudes towards women must be reformed. More than that, the sensitivity towards animals needs to be imbibed in human beasts.
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