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Why to glorify the rapist?

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On March 08, the country is going to celebrate International Woman’s Day. Many women will be felicitated and applauded for their ‘so called’ contribution, and then the life becomes normal the next day. Nowadays, I don’t know why media is insensitive. On one side they are talking about Women empowerment and on the other side they are publishing interviews of brutal rapists and glorifying their statements. One of the men convicted in the December 16, Delhi bus gang rape and murder has prompted outrage by claiming that the victim was to be blamed.

His victim, Jyoti Singh, 23, was returning from the cinema with a male friend in an evening when the six-strong men gang offered them a lift in a bus they had stolen. She was raped and beaten up with iron bars, prompting widespread demonstrations for Indian women to have greater protection from sexual violence. Victim was found with injury marks, including numerous bite marks, all over her body. One of the men, a minor, had called for passengers telling them that the bus was going towards their destination. The woman’s friend became suspicious when the bus deviated from its normal route and its doors were shut. When he objected, the group of six men already on board, including the driver taunted the couple, asking what they were doing alone at such a late hour.

When the woman’s friend tried to intervene, he was beaten, gagged and knocked unconscious with an iron rod. The men then dragged the woman to the rear of the bus, beating her with the rod and raped her while the bus driver continued to drive. Medical reports later said that the woman suffered serious injuries to her abdomen, intestines and genitals due to the assault, and doctors said that the damage indicated that a blunt object may have been used for penetration. That rod was later described by police as being a rusted, L-shaped implement of the type used as a wheel jack handle. After the beatings and rape ended, the attackers threw both victims from the moving bus. Then the bus driver allegedly tried to drive the bus over the woman, but she was pulled aside by her male friend. One of the perpetrators later cleaned the vehicle to remove the evidence.

Recently in an interview from jail, Mukesh Singh, one of the rapist said that women who went out at night had only themselves to blame if they attracted the attention of gangs of male molesters. In an interview for a BBC documentary, Singh also claimed that Jyoti and her friend tried to fight back. Describing the killing as an “accident”, he said: “When being raped, she shouldn’t fight back. She should just be silent and allow the rape. Then they’d have dropped her off after ‘doing her’, and only hit the boy.”

Singh, a slum-dweller who was 26 at that time, was driving the bus when the abduction occurred. He denied involvement in the attack itself, but his claims were rejected by the court, which said there was strong DNA evidence against him, and that even if he had not taken part, he should have intervened. But while the judge said that the case had “shocked the collective conscience” of India, Singh appears to show little remorse. “You can’t clap with one hand – it takes two hands,” he says in the interview. “A decent girl won’t roam around at 9 o’clock at night. A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy. Boy and girl are not equal. “Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes. About 20 per cent of girls are good.”

Singh, whose death sentence is currently on appeal, also claims that executing him and the other convicted rapists will endanger future rape victims. “The death penalty will make things even more dangerous for girls,” he says. “Before, they would rape and say, ‘Leave her, she won’t tell anyone.’ Now when they rape, especially the criminal types, they will just kill the girl. Death.” In the BBC documentary, he adds that his stance has not changed: “This is my stand. I still today stand on that reply.”

Rape and violence against women are a massive problem in India. According to the country’s National Crime Record Bureau, crimes against women have increased by 7.1 per cent since 2010. The number of rapes reported has also risen. Nearly, one in three rape victims in India is under the age of 18. One in 10 are under 14. In every 20 minutes, a woman is raped in India. Ninety-two women were raped on an average every day in India and the national capital with 1,636 cases recorded the highest number of such crimes among all cities. The total number of rape cases reported in India has gone up to 33,707 in 2013 from 24,923 in 2012. In 15,556 cases, the rape victims were aged between 18 and 30 years in 2013.

The number of rape cases has doubled in Delhi in 2013 compared to the previous year. A total of 1,636 rape cases were reported in Delhi in 2013, while 706 such cases were reported in the year 2012. On an average, four rape cases were reported in Delhi every day in 2013. The number of rape cases in Delhi was followed by 391 cases in Mumbai, 192 cases in Jaipur and 171 cases in Pune in 2013. As per the NCRB data, Madhya Pradesh at an average records 11 rapes every day, with a total of 4,335 such cases, which is the highest in 2013 among all other states. Madhya Pradesh is followed by Rajasthan with 3,285 cases, Maharashtra with 3,063 and Uttar Pradesh with 3,050 rape cases. The data showed that 13,304 cases were reported in 2013 where the victim was a minor, which was 9,082 in the previous year.

The condition of women in this country is very terrible. Either she is elder woman, teen, kids, or toddlers, they are raped. And, when she goes to complaint against the atrocities committed against her, she will be degraded with unwanted questions. Hardly any rapist in this country ever was awarded capital or any cruel punishment. There is no deterrence. And on top of that media is publishing the accused’s interview, glorifying him and making him ‘Hero’. I don’t know when and where this will stop? If these acts will not cease then we should feel ashamed for being an Indian.

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Vaidehi Taman
Vaidehi Tamanhttps://authorvaidehi.com
Vaidehi Taman an Accredited Journalist from Maharashtra is bestowed with three Honourary Doctorate in Journalism. Vaidehi has been an active journalist for the past 21 years, and is also the founding editor of an English daily tabloid – Afternoon Voice, a Marathi web portal – Mumbai Manoos, and The Democracy digital video news portal is her brain child. Vaidehi has three books in her name, "Sikhism vs Sickism", "Life Beyond Complications" and "Vedanti". She is an EC Council Certified Ethical Hacker, OSCP offensive securities, Certified Security Analyst and Licensed Penetration Tester that caters to her freelance jobs.
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