Amidst all the oratorical drama of promising justice to a rape survivor and hanging heads in shame, the ground reality remains the same. Women continue to be raped and murdered in broad daylight and sometimes their bodies burnt in the dead of the night by authorities that are supposed to protect them, robbing them of dignity yet again.
With all the civilisation and development, we have evolved to be a barbaric society where aggressors prevail.
The issues of rapes and molestation have become so common in our country that takes an unthinkable strain of violence and brutality inflicted upon the victim to rise from the deep slumber that the society resides in. Outrage has become momentary and passing.?
In most cases, where the perpetrators are powerful and reek of money and political connections, walk freely. In many cases, rapes are reduced to a passing crime, a mistake and in many cases it never happened at all.
The onus of proving the crime falls on the victim. And hence, there we become from victim-protecting to victim-blaming individuals. In several cases, oppressors and perpetrators have enjoyed massive political backing and garnered support from groups and organisations, who will leave no stone unturned to prove that the crime never happened.
In all such cases, the most unfathomable is the support for these predators - funding, flag-raising, chanting of patriotic slogans.
In 2018, a minor girl from the Bakharwal community was raped and killed in Jammu. The rape was allegedly done to instill fear among the nomads and drive them out of the area.?
The gangrape took place for a few days inside a temple whose residing deity is Lord Ram, the epitome of dignity, and the rapists garnered blatant support in the name of religion.?
Unleased was an ugly spectacle of people marching in support of the rapists, chanting religious slogans, raising the tricolor and demanding a bandh.
Two BJP ministers also took part in the rally by lawyers in support of the accused.?
In the Unnao rape case, prime accused BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar, garnered sympathy. Many residents in his paternal village in Uttar Pradesh believed that he had been falsely implicated due to political reasons.?
Sengar allegedly raped the victim in June 2017 after she was taken to his house by a woman under the pretext of getting a job.
After her attempts to get justice bore no fruit, she tried self-immolation outside the residence of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
The girl's father who was running post to pillar to seek justice for her daughter was apparently killed in police custody.
The rape survivor while on her way to a court hearing was set ablaze in the middle of the road.?
Sengar is now serving jail time.
In the spine-chilling Hathras case, the Rashtriya Savarna Parishad, an upper-caste Hindu group, in a flagrant attempt to protect the rapists, came out in protest, according to a newspaper clipping.
The four rapists were apparently a part of the Rashtriya Savarna Parishad. The group attempted to protect the caste interests based on which the crime was committed.
The case was earlier brushed off as fake news.?
Casteist and communal groups have always made it a point to support sexual violence against marginalised women and girls.