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Journalism of Courage
Once again the issue of death penalty for convicted rapists has been brought up in Parliament. The question we need to ask is: would the introduction of the death penalty result in better delivery of justice?
Is it the lack of severity of the punishment that is preventing women from accessing the law and getting justice? What is it that our politicians and judges and police can do to lessen women8217;s vulnerability to sexual assault? How do we create conditions that make our homes, roads and cities safer for girls and women?
Sexual assault, we know, can happen anywhere and to anyone. In the streets, in our homes, by strangers, by members of the family8212;whether in the public or private sphere, women have never been safe from violence, especially sexual violence.
How is it possible that men are able to get away with a range of acts of violence against women in the most public of places: from whistling, passing lewd comments, offensive stares, pinching, unwanted physical contact, molesting women and girls8212;commonly called 8216;eve-teasing8217;8212;to abduction and rape in broad daylight, sometimes even in the presence of 8217;witnesses8217;?
How is it possible that Dalit women can be stripped, paraded, beaten, raped by the orders of the panchayat in the centre of the village, with all its residents watching in complete complicity?
In Mumbai, a girl is raped in a train in the presence of seven witnesses who don8217;t raise a finger. A young girl is raped in a moving vehicle within the Delhi University campus; another similar incident in the crowded Lajpat Nagar market, and a medical student raped just outside her campus in the middle of the afternoon.
Even today the number of rapes reported is only a very small percentage of those that occur and an even smaller percentage of those actually reach the courts and result in convictions. One field study by Institute of Development and Communication, Chandigarh found that for every reported rape case, as many as 68 rapes went unreported, while for every FIR filed on molestation, 374 remained unreported.
An India Today article revealed that out of every 100 rape cases in India, only 10 are reported and out of every 100 accusations, only 5 offenders of rape are convicted. Clearly women are hesitant in approaching the police and the courts, and this is not going to be helped in any way by the increasing the severity of the punishment.
What needs to be tackled is the lack of faith of the average citizen, especially women, in the institutions of the state, the police and judiciary. Last year the Delhi Police created a storm by their statement that many women file false complaints under Section 498, which states that cruelty to a wife is a cognisable, non-bailable offence.
Women8217;s groups challenged this and argued that this kind of reasoning is precisely why women hesitate to approach the police. The Police Commissioner in Delhi has been quoted saying that crimes against women would go down if women would be careful about what they wear! How can women approach such a police force with the confidence that their complaint will be heard and recorded and followed up with sympathy?
The wider social context of shame for the woman and silence of the public only encourages and allows for such violence. What is most disturbing is that in such a public space, if proper mechanisms were put into place, if the public acted or spoke out, it should be impossible to get away with such acts.
Stereotypes of rape offenders as unknown men lurking in the dark have been shattered by numerous studies. The National Crime Records Bureau statistics for 2000 show that in 87.4 of rape cases, offenders were known to the victims; 30 per cent of these were neighbours. Almost 75 of the offenders were married men.
Judgements on rape cases in India between 1950-1990 revealed that 54 of the cases occurred between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. Sakshi 2001. The same study also revealed two interesting facts about the victims: in almost all cases, women were dressed in traditional attire and an overwhelming 70 of the complainants were minors. How does a five-year-old dress provocatively?
What is needed is clear commitment on the part of the State and its different arms to deliver justice. Women have to feel confident that if they approach the police, their case will be registered without doubting their morality and with sensitivity to the trauma that they are going through.
The judiciary and the courts need to demonstrate that sexual assault will be looked at as a crime and not subject women who have suffered sexual assault to 8216;8216;another rape in the court8217;8217;, by challenging the integrity of the woman and raking up her past sexual history as proof of her complicity or enjoying the assault.
Justice has to be delivered in the form of convictions even the existing punishment of imprisonment of seven to ten years are so rare so that women gain confidence that something will come out of the pain of going through the criminal system.
