From castration to death sentence, India has debated several measures to check rapists but did little to prevent the crime; the fastest growing among all violent offences in one of the largest democracies in the world, local media reported on Wednesday.
The chances of an Indian woman being raped had almost doubled over the past two decades whereas the probability of conviction had declined by a third, according to data from the Indian National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).
The message was clear: India was a dangerous place for women. From the khap-dominated Haryana to the progressive Bengal, rape was a grim reality in India with triggers as diverse as the socio-economic and cultural fabric of the country.
Every 20 minutes, a woman was raped in India. Every third victim of rape was a child, according to 2011 figures from the NCRB. The accused was convicted in only one of every four cases where trial was stretched over several years.
Even worse, deferment of rape cases in trial courts had increased from 78% to 83% over the past two decades. Madhya Pradesh topped the list among the states with the highest number of reported rape cases last year.
Haryana reported at least a dozen rapes in the past month – a spurt that prompted Congress President Sonia Gandhi to rush to Jind where a Dalit girl burnt herself to death after being gang-raped.
The NCRB numbers captured only those cases that were reported to police but officials agreed that many rapes went unreported due to social stigma.
“It is quite possible that the police, in some places, discourage victims from pressing charges,” said a senior police officer who did not want to be named.
That, however, might be an understatement. It took the police days to register a case when another victim of rape in Haryana’s Jind district complained last month. She had been gang-raped and an MMS of the crime was in circulation.
“The space for corruption for police is immense. Parents are pressured by the rapists’ family to settle. The police also make them feel nothing will come out of it,” said Jagmati Sangwan, director, women’s studies, MDU University, Rohtak. Investigators did not do a good job of collecting and preserving the evidence, she added.