Qaisar Mansoor
India’s capital New Delhi is still in the spotlight five years after the horrifying gang rape of a 23-year-old female student on a bus. The attack sparked mass protests and calls for action.
New Delhi, one of the most unsafe cities for women is dubbed as the India’s “Rape Capital”. The brutal gang rape of a student in a bus and her subsequent death caused by the injuries suffered during the assault in 2012 saw India’s criminal laws amended to allow for a death sentence in certain cases of rape. Despite stringent laws, not much has changed on the ground. There were 2,155 rapes recorded in Delhi in 2016 – a rise of 67 per cent from 2012, according to police data.
Think tanks estimate that only a minority of crimes are reported. In India, a woman can be “shamed” or “dishonoured” if she is the victim of a sexual assault.
For the survey, a total of 380 women’s rights experts were asked to assess women’s risk of encountering violence in cities with more than 10 million inhabitants between June and July this year. The experts also considered women’s access to health care, economic opportunities and their protection from harmful cultural practices.
According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), more than 28,000 cases of rape were reported across India in 2020. NCRB data from September 2021 also showed that more than 370,000 cases of crimes against women were reported in the country in 2021.
Experts believe that the real figures are much higher as many women do not report such cases due to fear/ shame or both.
Recently, a woman was allegedly abducted, gang-raped and paraded by her attackers on the streets of east Delhi’s Kasturba Nagar with her hair chopped, face blackened and a shoe garland around her neck.
Several videos purportedly of the woman being paraded did the rounds of social media.
The incident has once again highlights the vulnerability of women in the national capital and is described by Police as provoked by personal enmity. Member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) and a prominent feminist, Kavita Krishnan said, “The stripping and parading, face-blackening are shameful practices of caste-based atrocities against persons of oppressed castes.
The bitter truth is that many Indians don’t consider women to be human.” Gandhi tweeted. “This shameful fact needs to be acknowledged and called out.” Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, East Delhi MP Gautam Gambhir and DCW Chairperson Swati Maliwal condemned the brutal assault and the subsequent public humiliation and asked for strong action.
