The recent rape and murder of a junior medic in India’s eastern city of Kolkata, which triggered nationwide protests by doctors, again highlights the rate of crimes against women across the country, which remains among the world’s highest.
The killing on August 9th of the 31-year-old trainee doctor at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital was followed three days later by the horrific rape of two four-year-olds in the toilet of their kindergarten at Badlapur, a small town 53km from Mumbai, in western India.
Police arrested the playschool’s janitor, but only after thousands of outraged locals blocked railway tracks for hours demanding justice for the two children, in a rerun of similar countrywide demonstrations by doctors and women’s groups over the Kolkata case.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau, 31,516 rape cases were reported in India in 2022, the most recent year for which such data is available, making it a daily average of 84 rapes or one such violation every 28 minutes.
Women’s rights campaigners say rape cases continue to proliferate despite the introduction of tougher laws in 2012, following the fatal gang rape of a 22-year-old medical student by six males on a moving bus in New Delhi. These measures included a minimum sentence of 10 years for the guilty and life imprisonment, and even the death penalty, in cases involving minors, all of which have failed to reduce violent crimes against women.
A recent report by the federal statistics ministry revealed that India’s conviction rate for rape cases was 2.56 per cent, while that for attempted rape and other sexual crimes against women was 0.92 per cent.
The report, Women and Men in India – 2023, said a majority of rape and other sex crimes remained unreported due largely to “impunity, societal silence, stigma and the shame [for victims] associated with such incidents”.
It said the majority of rape victims were aged between 18 and 30 and often comprised migrant labourers, who often travelled long distances to remote building sites, observed late working hours and lived in cramped or open spaces with no privacy or access to toilets or bathing facilities.
[ Indian medics maintain protests over doctor’s rape and murderOpens in new window ]
Rape cases also took inordinately long to be adjudicated, an aspect that was vividly emphasised by a court verdict on Tuesday, in which six men were given life sentences 32 years after they blackmailed and gang raped about 150 girls in Ajmer, in western Rajasthan state, over a two-year period between 1990 and 1992. Many of the victims are now grandmothers, while some are deceased.
A spotlight in this context has also been turned on federal and state assembly lawmakers . According to the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), an independent electoral watchdog, 16 MPs and 135 members of legislative assemblies (are at present being prosecuted for rape and other sexual offences.
Basing its findings on the lawmakers’ affidavits to the Election Commission of India when filing their nominations, the ADR said 54 of these 151 parliamentary deputies belonged to prime minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), and 23 to the principal opposition Congress Party. The remaining 74 were from sundry parties, some of whom were the BJP’s coalition partners.
Meanwhile, India’s solicitor general Tushar Mehta, representing the federal Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is investigating the rape and murder of the junior doctor in Kolkata, detailed several anomalies in the case on Thursday to the supreme court.
He said the hospital authorities had initially informed the victim’s parents on August 9th that their daughter was “unwell”, and after they arrived to meet her, told them that she had taken her own life. Hospital officials subsequently reported the murder to local police around midnight, nearly 14 hours after the victim had been cremated.
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