On Sunday the country woke up to the news that a Spanish motorcyclist was gang-raped in Jharkhand's Dumka district by a gang of attackers who first tied up her husband. The incident came to light after the biker dared to speak about the incident via her Instagram channel, which has more than 200,000 followers, updating about what happened to her while she and her husband had camped for the night along a highway in remote Jharkhand.
While the Jharkhand police have since arrested three of the seven men who allegedly raped her, several more are on the run and are yet to be arrested.
Most pertinently, however, the motorcyclist vlogger couple made it clear that during their journeys around the globe, they visited several countries, including several poor and só called dangerous countries of Latin America, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, but never did they experience this level of threat and danger.
No sooner than the crime came to light, social media has been filled with foreigners sharing horror stories of them being cat-called, stalked, groped, surrounded, molested and even raped in India. Indeed, the most common complaint female foreign visitors to the country have is how they are unabashedly stared at and that the offenders take offence when confronted for their behaviour knowing very well that very little will happen to them even if they are caught.
It is indeed a matter of national shame on how normalised sexual crimes are being treated in this country when the scale is unparalleled in any other country. Rather than looking inwardly and introspecting, the country has gone more into damage control -- in a bid to salvage the image and reputation of the country rather than bring justice to the victims and spread education among the youth of the country against the sexual harassment of women.
The chairperson of the National Commission for Women Rekha Sharma, instead of pledging to bring justice to the victims -- is berating those who have been speaking up for not filing cases and taking them to their logical conclusion. The country’s landscape is scattered with the bodies of women -- Indian girls and women -- who have been made to face the gravest consequences because they chose to speak up.
From the Hathras gangrape where a Dalit girl was gang-raped by four upper caste men woman’s body was quickly cremated by the police in a bid to cover up the evidence, the Unnao rape where a 17-year-old-girl was burnt to death on her way to testify against a UP politician, the Kathua rape case, and the list goes on. Even in so-called high-profile cases like that of Tarun Tejpal and M J Akbar, the alleged perpetrators go scot-free as the system and society fail them. M J Akbar was even recently hosted by the Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industry for a talk organised for their members. Such impunity can be achieved only by a society that constantly and consistently looks away.
In Goa too, the harassment, groping, and surrounding of tourists by Indian men who roam the beaches in packs preying on female tourists and travellers are largely not acted against by the police. To expect that tourists will come forward and file complaints and then follow up on the cases is plain negligence on the part of the police.
The only way out for us as a society is to proactively act against such behaviour through police action against the culprits. There has to be zero tolerance against such crimes and even minor offences should not be allowed to pass.
