Sixteen-year-old Seenu was walking to her grandmother'shouse along a quiet street in northern India when a group of men dragged herinto a car, took her to a secluded field and raped her in turns.
They filmed the act on their mobile phones and forced a pillinto her mouth. She woke up an hour later, naked, bloodied, disoriented. Thesun was just beginning to set as she put on her jeans and made her way backhome.
When her father -- a gardener belonging to the"untouchable" or Dalit community which lies at the bottom of India'scaste system -- found out what had happened to his only daughter, he killedhimself.
Over the days that followed, Seenu (not her real name) andher mother made several trips to the nearest police station, defying threatsfrom her upper-caste attackers, some of whom she knew.
Finally, when the Dalit community in her village held publicprotests and piled pressure on the police, the first arrest was made -- twoweeks after the gang-rape. Since then, seven more men have been arrested.
Now living at her grandmother's home with six policeofficers as protection ahead of a court appearance next month, Seenu told AFPthat rape victims like herself have problems reporting the crime “becausepolice don’t respect them”.
“It makes me so angry. Why don’t the police listen? Whydon’t they do their job? Why do they have to humiliate the girl or treat herlike it’s her fault she got raped?” she said, speaking softly so the officersdid not overhear.
The gruesome gang-rape and murder of a student in New Delhion December 16 last year prompted nationwide protests and a public outcry overhow police handle sexual assault cases.
A beleaguered central government announced several safetymeasures earlier this month, including more night-time patrols by police inDelhi and the presence of at least a dozen female officers at every policestation.
India suffers from a massive shortfall in the number ofpolice on duty, currently employing only 129 officers per 100,000 people,according to data published in 2010 by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
This compares to 227 officers per 100,000 people in theUnited States.
Also, in many cases police have been found displaying thesame sexist prejudices prevalent in Indian society, leading them sometimes toencourage rape survivors to marry their attackers.
Last week, a judge at a Delhi court ordered police to pay Rs25,000 as compensation to a 13-year-old rape survivor, for refusing to file acomplaint and pushing her to settle the case with the alleged rapist.
J.S. Verma, a former chief justice of India heading agovernment commission looking into sex crime, lambasted the police for theirapathy and “low and skewed priority of dealing with complaints of sexualassault”.
In his report, Verma also called for an end to the so-called“two finger test”, a practice decried as demeaning and flawed in which doctorsattempt to determine if a rape victim is sexually active.
Stung by the hail of criticism, police officials in Delhirecently revived a “gender sensitization” programme that originally ran from2008-2011, enrolling all personnel on the course in a bid to improve theirhandling of women.
Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar promised that theforce had been “jolted,” leading it to “look at offences against women in atotally different way”.
The government's plans to improve policing also includemeasures to recruit more women, who make up just 6.5 percent of the force,according to figures in the National Crime Records Bureau.
Maurice Nagar police station could be a model for thefuture. Located near a sprawling university campus, the recruitment of womenhas long been a priority and a female officer is required to be present at allhours.
The khaki-clad guards outside are female, the officer whoregisters complaints is female and many of the officers on duty, zipping in andout of traffic on motorbikes are female.
But even here an officer, Nazma Khan, dismisses the notionthat police reform is a panacea.
"These crimes happen because of people with a messed-upmentality, who are everywhere," she told AFP.
"If we want to change the mentality then it has tochange at school level, at homes, in the family, otherwise recruitment (ofpolice) will not make a difference," she added.
