Disclaimer – The article just conveys the personal opinions of the authors and not of the organization or its affiliated personnel.
Please Do Not Rape
Hrishit: Yes, this article is another rant like the hundreds of articles circulating around right now, like it does every time some major rape case takes place in the country. This is not a news-oriented site and us as first-year students cannot bring in official news reports from the place of occurrence of the crime.
But what we can do as educated citizens who are privileged enough to be reading this on our expensive devices is take an initiative to step forward whenever something wrong happens in front of us instead of being a silent observer. An initiative to teach people the value of consent and the meaning of “No” in the true sense.
I know the article is long and with the busy schedule everyone has to go through, most of you won’t have the time or patience to go through the full thing so I will just provide a gist of the most important points that I want to portray.
For the boys reading this (being a person who lost someone close directly due to molestation) and I cannot stress this enough, PLEASE DO NOT RAPE.
For the girls reading this dress however you want, be what you want to be, don’t let anyone put you down based on your gender but at the same time don’t ruin anyone’s life faking a case as that doesn’t only affect the accused but your entire gender once the truth about the case is found.
16th December 2012, remember this day? Or have you forgotten?
Aditi: Never mind I’ll remind you. It was the day when the entire women populace of this nation was disgraced to the grounds when Nirbhaya was brutally gang-raped and mutilated in a moving bus on a cold winter night. After her long battle for survival, she alas took her last breath on 29th December 2012.
Look how far we came. Look what we gifted our warrior Nirbhaya on her 7th death anniversary. Another beautiful sister in heaven, Priyanka Reddy. How pleased do you think Nirbhaya would be? How proud she would be after getting to know that after 7 long years of her sacrifice, we still stand at the very same place, that we failed her again as a nation and we failed every other woman in this country who once dared to believe that India could be her home!
Every couple of months one such news has to pop-up on our mobile screens and we express anger, disgust, pain and disappointment, the same old drill. Actually no, not a couple of months, gangrapes, molestations, sexual-harassments, small news articles about one or the other incident come up every day on my Google news.
But not all make it to the top headlines, to the heated arguments, to the political debates between our intellectuals. But this one did and our so-called “Democratic” nation is at outrage again. Marches have started, campaigns have started and I’m sure you have already put up a bunch of Insta stories expressing your rage and grief regarding the incident. Good on your part, there’s nothing wrong in doing all this. But what about Priyanka who suffered such an inhumane act?
No Nation For Women
Let me remind you that Dr Priyanka was brutally gang-raped after these monsters punctured her scooty, offered fake help, forced her to accept their help, dragged her to a construction site, forcibly made her drink alcohol, raped her until she took her last breath and they didn’t stop even after she died, THEY RAPED HER CORPSE?! And set her body on fire.
This woman was raped and burned in the prime of the night at around 9 pm. How much worse can this get?!
Later that night when her sister came up to the police station to file a report for her missing sister, the officers reportedly didn’t start the search until 4 am. Hadn’t there been such major negligence on part of the police authorities, Priyanka might have survived. But no, she didn’t.
Can we blame this on one person? Is it just the rapists, who commit the crime?
First, there is no stopping the rapists who commit the crime freely, secondly, the authorities don’t function efficiently, people in power don’t take action and us?
We never tell our sons what not to do, we never tell them that “Son, you DO NOT rape a woman, that is not acceptable!”
We are all at fault. We are all criminals, and we all let this happen to Priyanka. Shame on us as a nation, we failed to do our job as, officers, politicians, mother, fathers and citizens!
Just Another Statistic
I have barely seen any politician in power who has come up and made a statement supporting the victims or condemning such acts. All these politicians do is make derogatory senseless remarks and blame the victim. When have they ever come up and stood in support of the victim’s family? Never!
They have made remarks like “Women are dented and painted”, “They are boys, they commit mistakes”, “90% rapes are consensual”, “Boys and girls should be married at an early age so that rapes don’t happen”, “Rape by 2 men is not gang rape”, “No one commits rapes intentionally, it happens by mistake”, “Women should not venture out in the dark”, “Rapes are sometimes right”.
Yes! Don’t be shocked, these are statements from our very own MLAs and MPs, our so-called representatives in the parliament and these are just a few of the many gruesome and degrading commentators on women and rapes in India.
And don’t even get me started on the laws and the legal procedures.
Dhananjoy Chatterjee (that too as an extremely controversial case where it is still suspected that the accused did not commit the crime but was hanged only to clear the public outrage taking place) is the only person who has been executed in India in the 21st century for a crime not related to terrorism.
He allegedly committed the crime of murder rape and theft. Since then and before that no rapists have been hanged, not a single one! And let’s not even get into the statistics of rape that happen in India every day.
Here is a list of punishment for rape across the globe:
- Egypt- Rapist is hanged till death.
- United Arab Emirates- Death
- China- In China, Rape is considered as a brutal crime and the Death Penalty is awarded to Rapist.
- Afghanistan- The rapist is hanged to Death or shot dead by a bullet in the head. The punishment is given within 4 days of the crime.
- France- Rapist is given 10 years of imprisonment, but if the victim dies, punishment is increased to 30 years.
- . USA- Here, maximum punishment granted in 30 years in jail.
- Greece- Rapist is punished with incarceration.
- Iran- Death Penalty is granted to the rapist.
- North Korea- The offender is either shot in his head or vital organs by a firing squad.
Why don’t we have any severe punishment for a crime as heinous as rape?
Why do rapists roam around freely on roads after getting bail?
Why so many pleas and petitions are taken into consideration?
A GIRL HAS BEEN RAPED! And you are considering mercy for a rapist?! If not then, trials go on for decades. The dust settles, people forget and move on, the family lives in grief and justice is always denied. And this whole loop plays on repeat in every single case.
Teach the Children the Truth
Question Harassment Victims Face Eyes Rape NoHrishit: Every time a family member or a known person goes out, I tell them to take care while they are out, but the reasons for both the genders varies a lot. If it’s a male member, I just hope they don’t run into any problem at work and hope they cross the road safely, but when it’s someone from the female gender, along with wishing for the same things, I just hope she can return in one piece without being physically and mentally violated for life by some animal who belongs to the same gender as me.
Believe me, it is easy to play the blame game, but not so to come up with a proper solution to the ongoing problems. Right now, the country is united to fight for justice for Priyanka Reddy and they believe that the death penalty to the rapists would achieve that.
Maybe it will bring a sense of closure and I personally do feel that scums like these people have no right to be alive and live off our hard-earned tax money. But will this temporary sense of closure solve the problems of half of the billion-plus strong population of India?
Every time something like this happens, it is just followed by a massive public outrage, some extremely controversial statements by our beloved political figures and “tips” for “safety of women” by the police, till the case slowly dies down until it is brought up again during the next big rape case, citing the previous case as an example of how the country doesn’t learn anything.
Is there any proper solution to this vicious cycle, where in most cases the perpetrators walk free or live off taxpayer money getting 2 meals a day along with a roof over their head for the rest of their lives?
Are the police and the fast track courts doing enough to protect the citizens and speed up the procedures? Is giving tips to women about how to protect themselves more helpful than teaching boys the importance of NOT committing a rape?
Does the name of the deceased victim popping as the #1 trending search term on a porn site signify that India is close to becoming a superpower?
I am sure everyone can come to a common answer for all the questions above. Even though India has a death penalty system for a rape that results in death, why the sentence isn’t implemented quickly is a common question in everyone’s mind. The court stated that the death penalty is only for the “rarest of rare” cases, something which only they know the meaning of.
Sadly, it has been proved worldwide that the death penalty is not a proper deterrent for criminals, that is just because there is a death penalty for a crime doesn’t mean that it will scare the criminal enough to not commit the crime anyway. With extremely controversial statements from affluent personalities and MPs stating that the convicted should be lynched by the public or stoned to death might sound comforting a little to soothe the rage that’s boiling in every one of us.
In reality, everyone knows that it will create more bad than good as what they mentioned is very much against the law and if the protectors and makers of law break them, then obviously it can be misinterpreted by certain elements in the society.
In a country where sex is a taboo topic even with such a massive population growth index, I believe that the only probable solution to the problem can come up once people get proper sex education and most importantly understand the concept of consent. From childhood, a majority of Indians are subjected regardless of their place in society are subjected to conditioning according to the will of others and have no place to express their own will and exercise their personal freedom.
I personally believe this is where change should begin as it is natural that a person whose consent never had any value from childhood will value consent of others. Even though the context differs a lot, childhood conditioning does affect the person for the rest of their lives.
A Culture of Rape – The Cradle of Crime
With rape culture and harassment of women thriving in various states, what we need is not just laws but the assured strict enforcement of laws regardless of the personal beliefs and system of the region. If the “culture and heritage” of the country that so many speaks so proudly of doesn’t allow a gender to roam freely on the roads without fearing for their lives at every step, then there is no place for such a culture and that is certainly not a heritage of this country.
As is has been said in the movie Article 15, “What we need is not superheroes but people who would not wait for superheroes.”
Children need to be educated so they get to know it is their duty to stand up to any wrongdoings instead of being a part of it.
It is only the collective efforts of the society as a whole and includes everyone regardless of the caste, creed, gender and social status. I know it must be really hard for the accused’s mother to state that if her son is actually found guilty he should be burnt in the same way as the victim, it would have been much easier if she had stressed on the importance of consent to the accused during his childhood.
Rest in peace, Dr. Priyanka Reddy. Even though we as a nation failed you, I sincerely hope that through small gestures and collective efforts, someday we can create a society where nobody has to face what you went through.
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