As the clock struck 12 on the eve of India’s 77th year of independence, the streets of Kolkata rang out with the volley of women’s voices screaming “dhikkar” (shame) and “we want justice.” The recent brutal rape and murder of a 31-year-old junior doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College and Hospital during the night shift has triggered protests across states and once again shed light on the abject state of women’s safety in the country. Despite stringent laws against rape, strengthened after the 2012 Delhi gang rape case—which had led to similar nationwide protests—gender-based violence remains high, with incidents such as this serving to remind us of the state’s absolute failure to safeguard women’s right to life and safety, and consequently, their right to work and lead a dignified life.
Shocking as it is, the Kolkata rape case is not surprising or even remotely rare when it comes to gender-based violence in India, where nearly 90 rapes are reported every day according to the National Crime Records Bureau’s 2022 data. This is despite experts estimating that over 90 percent of sexual violence cases in India go unreported. While women often face sexism and victim-shaming, especially if the incident occurs in a public place, the issue extends beyond adult working women. Despite persistent demands by gender rights activists, marital rape remains unrecognized as an offense by Indian law, even though cruelty by husbands and their relatives makes up one-third of all crimes against women in India. When it comes to sexual violence, NCRB’s 2014 data highlighted that 90 percent of rapes in India were perpetrated by offenders known to the victims, such as relatives, neighbors, and employers. The numbers are just as disturbing concerning the safety of minors. At least 22 cases were lodged every day under the gender-neutral Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) in 2022, recording 63,414 crimes against children. In 2022, only 3 percent of POCSO cases resulted in convictions. The data speaks for itself.
Legal reforms, when they came, seemingly came at the cost of women as well. The 1972 Mathura case of custodial rape, wherein a 16-year-old tribal girl was allegedly raped by two policemen on the premises of Desaiganj Police Station in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra, led to a watershed moment in India’s attitude toward sexual violence. The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1983 changed India's rape laws to emphasize consent and victim protection, establishing that if the victim claimed non-consent to sexual intercourse, the Court would presume non-consent as a rebuttable presumption. It happened again after the 2012 “Nirbhaya” gang rape, where a 21-year-old woman was brutalized and raped inside a moving bus in the nation’s capital. Once again, laws were made more stringent. Yet, in 2019, the nation was shaken by the gang rape and brutal burning of a veterinarian in Hyderabad and again after the 2020 rape and death of a 19-year-old Dalit girl in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, whose body was set on fire in the dead of night by police.
The fact that only a handful of cases receive media (and consequently public) attention means that protests are usually knee-jerk. In most cases, politicians and law enforcement resort to blame games and victim-shaming until the news cycle moves on to something new. In cases where the outrage refuses to die down, an encounter or a death sentence helps “avenge” the victim, who is given a moniker like “Nirbhaya” to soothe the nation’s collective conscience, and the protesters disperse, satisfied to have contributed to “justice.”
But what follows the protests and the short-lived, albeit well-meaning, shows of strength? Despite all the noise and media attention, three of the four men accused in the Hathras case were set free by an Uttar Pradesh court in 2023. The fourth was found guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and under sections of the SC/ST Act, but not of rape. The Mathura rape survivor, who became an international symbol against gender-based violence at the time, continues to live a diminished life in rural Maharashtra, with her perpetrators found not guilty as the courts refused to believe her. In Hyderabad, protests following the 2019 gang rape led the Hyderabad police to issue a 14-point “advisory” for women, essentially containing tips on how not to get raped. Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao’s response was to impose an 8 pm curfew on women employees of the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation, prohibiting them from working night shifts. The 23-year-old victim of the Unnao rape, in which BJP leader Kuldeep Singh Sengar was eventually convicted, was set on fire by miscreants on her way to testify in court. Incidentally, Mamata Banerjee had stirred up a hornet's nest after calling the 2015 Suzette Jordan gang rape in Park Street a "shajano ghotona" (fake incident) by the Left to politically destabilize the TMC government. While this time 'Didi,' who pitches herself as a women's leader, has refrained from making such comments about the rape and has sought punishment, she has accused BJP and the Left of causing unrest amid ongoing public protests. She has also praised Kolkata Police's handling of the case, which has otherwise been widely criticized. The case has since been handed over to the CBI for investigation by the Calcutta High Court, which removed Kolkata Police from the case citing significant lapses on their part.
Despite government gimmicks highlighting women’s empowerment and political attempts to woo the increasingly important “female voter,” political parties, lawmakers, and law enforcers repeatedly fail to tackle the culture of rape and the systems of patriarchy that render gender minorities unsafe. Stricter laws only work when police are sensitive and justice is speedy. A government may not be responsible for patriarchal depictions of gender roles in popular films, but it can work on providing gender training and sex education in schools to teach the young. Instead of curtailing women’s working hours, it can provide better security on the streets.
A look at the Nirbhaya fund perhaps best spells out the lack of political will when it comes to women’s safety. While four men were convicted and sentenced to death eleven years after “Nirbhaya’s” death, her namesake fund started by the union government in 2013 to support initiatives protecting dignity and ensuring women’s safety in India remains grossly underutilized. Against a total of Rs 7,213 crore allocated to the non-lapsable corpus fund up to the financial year 2023-24, only Rs 5,119 crore had been utilized as of December 8, 2023.
Public memory and outrage over sexual violence in India are sporadic and short-lived, but the specter of sexual violence against women and other sexual minorities continues to loom large over the future of the nation, which expects its women to be safe but fails to teach its men to respect their safety. In the wake of the ongoing protests, Outlook revisits its past coverage of sexual violence in India to jog the memory of those in charge of safeguarding life and dignity by highlighting the pervasive nature of gender-based violence that “India’s daughters” face everywhere, every day.
