Paying the Price for being a Woman…

by Anup Sahu

I am perturbed by the recent increase in sexual and violent crimes against women. What has been more disturbing is the increasing level of brutality in such incidents. Last Friday (February 24), a minor girl was allegedly raped inside a moving car in Noida by five young men. Earlier last month in Kolkata, a 37-year-old woman and a mother of two was allegedly raped at gunpoint. In another ghastly incident, a woman was dragged out of the train near Kolkata and allegedly raped by a gang of robbers when she tried to put up a resistance. These are just a few of the many harrowing incidents of violence against women in the recent past that exemplify the deplorable scenario of women’s safety and the deteriorating law and order situation. Furthermore, this kind of savagery is not just restricted to Indian women. There have been numerous incidents of foreigners being sexually assaulted and murdered in the past.

Not surprisingly, India has been placed as the fourth most dangerous place for women in the world in a report published last year by Thomson Reuters’ Trust Law Women. The findings of the report corroborate and deepen the popular impression about the high level of insecurity felt by women. Whether one happens to be a girl of tender years or a woman of sixty years, a housewife or a working woman,walking on the road or travelling by public transport, the feeling of fear and insecurity is common among them. It is plain that even after six decades of independence, this country has failed to accord its female citizens, who constitute about half of its population, the rights, liberty and dignity which they deserve as human beings.

India ratified the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the most significant international instrument on women’s human rights, in the year 1993. Under CEDAW, states have an obligation to prevent all forms of violence against women. However, even after ratification of CEDAW by India, there has been an alarming rise in violence against women in both urban and rural areas. Crimes against women continuously increased during 2005-2010 with 1,55,553 incidents reported in 2005; 1,64,765 in 2006; 1,85,312 in 2007; 1,95,856 in 2008; 2,03,804 in 2009 and 2,13,585 in 2010. [Source: National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)] And while violence against women continues to increase in India, the law and criminal justice system have in many ways failed to respond to or deal effectively with this. The rate of conviction is reported to be dismally low in crimes against women. The rate of conviction in rape and molestation cases is a were 27 per cent. [Source: NCRB] In fact, violence against women is usually treated as a marginal issue by the law enforcement machinery in our country. In the Kolkata rape incident, the unfortunate remarks made by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee alleging the incident to be a fabricated story, the remarks of a senior Minister questioning the victim’s morals and humiliation of the victim by the police are reflective of how sections of Indian society continue to view crimes against women. The incident also exemplifies the irresponsible and parochial attitude harboured by the custodians of law and order.

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Violence against women in India starts from the mother’s womb itself and continues till death in various forms. Female foeticide, child marriages, forced prostitution, rape, honour killings, domestic violence, dowry deaths, acid attacks are among the various barbaric manifestations of this violence perpetuated against women. This leads one to wonder whether there are sufficient laws to prevent such crimes against women. There are in fact various laws and the government is contemplating introduction of new laws along with enhancement of punishment in existing laws. Last week, a Delhi Additional Sessions Judge, perturbed by the brutality inflicted on women in sexual crimes has called on Indian Legislatures to enact penal laws prescribing chemical castration as a mode of punishment in cases involving rape of minors and serial offenders. However, just introduction of new laws or enhancement of punishment won’t solve the problem. It is the certainty of punishment, and not necessarily its severity, that deters a criminal. Given the notoriously slow pace of criminal investigation and trials and the low rate of conviction in our country, the perpetrators gather courage to commit crimes because they know that their chances of escape are high.

In such a scenario, it is absolutely essential that laws are strictly enforced to make sure that whoever commits crime is punished for it. Public abhorrence of the crime should be reflected through the imposition of exemplary punishment as deterrent by the courts. Also, there is an urgent need to improve the policing standards and at the same time, the police personnel too must be counselled to treat the victims of sexual crimes with more empathy.

Moreover, the internalisation that has taken place in the minds and hearts of people that the lives o fwomen are insignificant needs to be changed. It is certain that violence against women will continue unabated unless society and the law combine to break the mould. And it will be tragic if the issue is still not taken up with the kind of seriousness it deserves.

The author is a fifth-year student, West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata.