No Stopping: 7 Yrs After 'Nirbhaya Case' India Is Only Counting Rape-Murders Of Its Daughters

Turn newspaper pages, watch TV debates or visit the news website you subscribe to, the headlines dominating every single medium is about rapes in the country. It looks that we are in 2012 and still mourning the rape and murder of Nirbhaya in Delhi. Almost a decade has passed and nothing has changed in this country. Women are as vulnerable as they have ever been. Sexual predators find new ways to prey on women and children and them silence them forever. Women, who constitute half of humanity are subjected to sexual violence with so much ease, why? Because the perpetrators simply don't fear the law.

One more rape

Even as the country is still reeling from the shocking gang-rape and brutal murder of a 27-year-old veterinary doctor by four men in Telangana, another gruesome crime has now surfaced. A 17-year-old girl was gang-raped by six men in Seeranayakan village of Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu.

The incident happened around 9 pm on November 26, when the girl, a class XI student was out with a male friend in a park to celebrate a birthday party. While they were returning, the accused confronted them and beat up the male friend, then dragged the teenager to a secluded place and allegedly asked her to strip.

When she refused, two of the accused sexually assaulted her while the other four recorded the entire incident. The crime came to light after the girl narrated the incident to her mother the next day.

Based on the family's complaint police have booked the six accused under various sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, and Sections 354 (assault on a woman to outrage her modesty) and 506(ii) (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Out of them, four of the accused, identified as Rahul, Prakash, Karthikeyan, and Narayanamoorthy were arrested by the police on Saturday. Coimbatore Police said the search for the two others, who raped the teenager is on by a special team that was formed to investigate the case.

Same day, another rape

On the same day, another gang rape was reported from Jharkhand, where a group of armed men abducted and sexually assaulted a student of a prestigious law university in Ranchi. The spot from where the woman was abducted is about 8 km from the chief minister's official residence on the Kanke Road. In raids conducted through Wednesday, police arrested 12 persons who have confessed to the crime.

The recent incidents of brutal sexual assaults have once again raised some serious questions about the safety of women in the country. In Telangana, there is a growing demand for capital punishment for the four accused in the rape and murder of the 27-year-old vet.

Only laws, no enforcement

Earlier this year the parliament had passed the amendment to the Prevention Of Child Sex Offences (Pocso) act to award the death penalty to anyone convicted of raping a child under 12.

Piloting the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Amendment) Bill, 2019, Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani had said that it aims at making offences against children gender-neutral.

Those who support the death penalty say it strikes fear in the minds of potential rapists, restores faith in a damaged system and acknowledges the gravity of child rape. However, data shows that even the death penalty has not helped in reducing sexual assault on women and girls.

Debate on death penalty

According to a study titled 'The Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics report for 2018,' the number of death sentences awarded by trial courts in 2018 was the highest in a calendar year since 2000. Only four death-row prisoners were executed in the last 14 years in the country and only one of them was in a rape case.

There is also an argument that the death penalty for rape cases could encourage criminals to murder their victims to prevent them from identifying them. Many also pointed out that the accused in the 2012 Delhi gang-rape convicts who have been sentenced to death have not been executed yet. There were a total of six accused in the case. One of them was found dead in his jail cell, in an apparent suicide, while another got away owing to the fact that he was below the age of 18 at the time when he committed the crime.