On August 9, the brutal rape and murder of a 31-year-old postgraduate trainee doctor at the state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata shocked the nation, reminding Indians of all the cases of rape, gang rape and other acts of sexual violence that keep repeating with new names and locations.
Protests have been held all over the country this month demanding justice for the Kolkata rape victim and safety for women. Unfortunately, if it takes a case like this to re-awaken public consciousness, one wonders how long it will be before women can feel safe in India?
As more and more cases come to light, images from past incidents flash in our collective memory--the two minor girls hanging from a mango tree in Badaun, or the women paraded naked in Manipur, or the woman thrown out of a bus naked and bleeding on the streets of Delhi, or the Mumbai nurse found in a pool of blood with a dog chain around her neck.
These incidents evoke anger, fear, and questions about the right to freedom and dignity for women that is guaranteed in our Constitution. However, once the rage settles, we tend to forget; we forget the survivors who live with their trauma, and we forget the families who only have memories left of victims.
For the next issue of Outlook, our reporters travelled across the country to revisit some of these stories through close conversations with families, survivors and people who fought for them. This is an attempt to remember them all – the widely reported cases as well as those that were forgotten as mere crime briefs, perhaps because they involved poor, lower-caste communities in remote areas.
