The India Rape Epidemic

INDIA

Made In India

Indian opposition politician Rahul Gandhi is facing sedition charges for a small rhyme that refers to a big problem.

Speaking at a campaign event, the Congress Party honcho said Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Made in India” slogan should be “Rape in India” due to the spate of protests and high-profile cases involving sexual assaults on women, the Times of India reported.

Gandhi is refusing to the apologize perhaps because he knows a large segment of the Indian public believes he’s calling attention to an important problem.

In late November, four men gang-raped and killed a veterinarian, set her body on fire and left it under a bridge near the southern city of Hyderabad, reported the Guardian. Video footage suggested the men had plotted the attack, deflating her scooter tires and then offering to help her. Hundreds of women took to the streets to demand justice.

“Unfortunately, we need something like this (the rape) to shake us to seek change,” one demonstrator told Al Jazeera. “No one addresses the basic issues that are a threat to women’s safety on streets on a daily basis.”

Days later, a second woman, a teenager in Uttar Pradesh was raped and over 90 percent of her body was burned, the Independent reported.

Indian police reported more than 32,500 rape cases in 2017, according to Reuters. That’s around 90 a day. Courts disposed of around 18,300 cases in the same year. Almost 128,000 cases remained pending at the time.

The Hyderabad incident especially touched a nerve because it recalled an attack in Delhi in 2012, when six men raped a 23-year-old student on a bus. The woman later died from her injuries. That incident led Indian lawmakers to strengthen rape laws.

The Delhi student’s convicted assailants don’t appear particularly contrite, however. One recently asked officials not to carry out his death sentence because air pollution was already killing him. CNN wrote that the court is likely to reject his request.

Police arrested the four men accused of the Hyderabad rape. But the alleged rapists never answered for their crimes, at least not in court. Instead, officers shot all four dead under the bridge where they left their victim, saying the men tried to grab their guns when they were taken to the scene of the attack, reported the New York Times.

Some Indians celebrated the suspects’ deaths. Others worried about the rise of vigilantism in India.

Some girls have been taking matters into their own hands since the 2012 incident, forming a vigilante group called the Red Brigades.

Still, a sense of justice being denied happened again recently when an alleged gang-rape victim was attacked and critically burned as she headed to court to testify against her attacker in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, wrote Reuters. Her village was divided over whether the perpetrators should be punished, mostly over caste lines.

Still, also in Uttar Pradesh state, a lawmaker expelled from Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party was tried in a separate rape and kidnapping case. A Delhi court found him guilty Monday, Press Trust India reported.

But as many women in India say in spite of the small victories, the larger one remains elusive.

“Nobody wants to invest in changing the system,” said Sunitha Krishnan, an activist and gang-rape survivor in Hyderabad, told the Associated Press. “You’ve just done some instant justice, closure, everybody’s moved on. And for most people, this is finished. But life doesn’t move on for hundreds of thousands of victims who are languishing for justice. And that’s the pathetic reality of this country.”