We are Indians!

No women please,

INDEX No country for little girls

A crying shame: The battered baby girl syndrome Baby Afreen, you were never wanted here You showed us the mirror, baby Falak Baby Falak case: 5 things that will happen next Female infanticide: Affluent South Delhi tops capital chart Minor girls raped in Allahabad juvenile home 04 06 07 09 10 11

Our judgmental protectors

From the Delhi police: Why women deserve to be raped The great Indian cop defence: Rape is never ever my fault Rape in Gurgaon: Banning bouncers is not an answer Mamata rubbishes rape claim, says it is to malign states image 13 16 18 20

India's angry young rapists

Guiltlessness of gang rape: Safety of numbers Gurgaon gang-rape: The ugly side of help culture Gang rape: The angry young men of new India 22 24 26

Readers weigh in:

Blaming the victim is insulating to men Media must play a larger role Put the blame where it lies Rapists must be named and shamed 30 30 31 31

No country for little girls

baby girl syndrome

The death of baby Afreen is undoubtedly tragic. But the greater tragedy is that such cases are hardly rare in a society that routinely looks the other way while children are beaten, starved, and suffocated merely because they are girls.

A crying shame: The battered

hree-month-old baby Afreen succumbed to her injuries on Wednesday in a Bangalore hospital. She was physically tortured by her father. On 16 March, two-year-old baby Falak, died at AIIMS in New Delhi. She was also a victim of physical violence. These two cases brought to the fore, a reality being suffered by countless girl children in India, that is hardly ever reported.

FP Staff, Apr 11, 2012 A 2011 report by the UN-DESA (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs) shows that India has the highest rate of female child mortality among the 150 countries surveyed, which also included the LDRs (less developed regions). The report also points out that India has the largest gender-based difference in child mortality. A girl child in India, who is between the ages of 1 to 5 years, is 75 percent more likely to die than a boy in the same age category, the report added.

This data appears more stark when read along with the recent data provided by the Union home ministry which indicated a drop in infant mortality rate in India to a national average of 47 to every 1,000 births. There has been an overall drop in violence in India too. What makes for these female deaths? A 2011 report from a study conducted jointly by the Indian Council of Medical Research and the Harvard School of Public Health, published in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, established that girls under the age of five years in India were dying at an abnormally high rate because of the prevalence of domestic violence in their homes. In India, female infanticide has been systematically made part of the societal practices. Each region has its well-established methods to kill the female child which includes drowning the baby in a bucket of water, feeding her salt on burying her alive in an earthen pot. A study by the Registrar General of India published in 2010 in medical journal, The Lancet, pointed to a curious factor. It said, girls in India, between the age of one month to five years were dying of pneumonia and diarrhea at a rate that is 4-5 times higher than their male counterparts of the same age. Inducing pneumonia is one of the modern methods of killing the girl child, says author Gita Aravamudan in her book Disappearing Daughters. Whatever be the method,the root cause of the abuse of girl child in India can be traced to its culture.

In India corporal punishment is still viewed as a normal practice, which makes it difficult for one to judge whether the violence going on in a neighbours home is a simple punishment or child abuse. But more importantly, the monitoring system fails at the very outset, when the child is brought to the hospital: In medical education, the specialties that should specifically deal with battered child syndrome are Pediatrics and Forensic Medicine. Searches of various Indian textbooks that are commonly used by students in various regions of the country show that most of them do not vividly cover the topic. The textbooks that do mention it, do not have specific instructions as to what the doctors or nurses action should be, should they suspect battered child syndrome. Under such circumstances, the chance of child battery being reported to any authority is very slim. It is rare that doctors take the trouble of reporting and insisting on the childs welfare in terms of changing custody and involving police and child welfare organizations This leads to most cases of child abuse and violence go unreported. The absence of an official agency to look into specifically child abuse, only aggravates this menace. The key is to bring changes both at the societal as well as the legal level, and to improve ongoing monitoring of a girl childs welfare, be it at the hospital or in the local anganwadi. A change in perception of a girls role in society backed by laws punishing perpetrators of child abuse are the only ways to make a difference.

Baby Afreen, you were

never wanted here

Why, oh why, did you have to be born here and waste your tender life this way?
Venky Vembu, Apr 11, 2012

ear Baby Afreen

Now that your short and wretched life has been pitifully snuffed out, its okay for me to say it: you were never really wanted here. You were never wanted in this benighted country, with its crass gender biases and sex determination tests and sex-selective abortions and female infanticide, all of which thrive sneakily despite thunderous showpiece efforts to outlaw them.

You were never really wanted in a society that will tolerate and even justify the most egregious crimes against women, and return to its latte-laced life after a bit of sympathetic tuttutting because they interfere with their perception of an India where all things are bright and beautiful. You were never wanted in a celebrity-obsessed media environment such as ours where, for all the momentary shock engendered by your tragedy, young girls like you are so routinely battered youll likely not be remembered beyond the next news cycle (here comes the tsunami warning!) and where the rape of a twoyear-old girl is a news filler to be tucked away in spaces where it wont devalue advertising money. But perhaps you didnt get the memo, for you did come by and lived out your few fitful months, until the hands that ought to have tenderly held you extinguished cigarette butts on your bare back and then broke your neck. But now that youre dead, Baby Afreen, dont slip away quietly from the face of the earth.

You were never wanted as the rotten fruit of the loins of a monstrous father who evidently didnt want a girl child, but didnt know (or didnt care) that everytime he was overcome by his libido and spilled his accursed seed, there was just as much of a chance that he would have the daughter he never wanted.

Stay on for an eternity and haunt our conscience such as it is. Torment and torture the man (it seems inappropriate to call him your father) who murdered you with his bare hands. And do send out a memo to other girl children waiting to be born so that they may not waste their tender lives in the way that you did.

baby Falak
Baby Falaks case has brought the focus back to thousands of children who are abandoned by their parents. And had it not been for the continuous media coverage, hers wouldve been another such case which wouldve worked as database for police records.
Danish Raza, Mar 17, 2012

You showed us the mirror,

his world was not for you, baby Falak. In the last two months of your life, you told us why you did not belong here.

On Republic Day, a national daily published your plight. The nation discovered you. But while unraveling your story, no regard was shown to your sensitivities and the fact that you were undergoing treatment. Crossing legal and ethical boundaries, media published your name, picture and each and every minute detail, as and when we got it. Journalists entered the intensive care unit where you were getting treated and tried monitoring each and every move of yours when you were battling for life. We know you by your real name. We should not have. Through the girl who took you to AIIMS, you told us the story of thousands of girls who are victims of prostitution. And the flesh trade which is flourishing not in remote towns of India but right in the national capital. The girl is now undergoing counseling and hopefully, will be normal in time to come. While exploring that how this teenager got your possession, we touched upon vulnerability of girl child in Indian families. Father of the girl with whom you spent a few days and who brought you to AIIMS, used to get drunk and beat her. That was why she left home and subsequently became victim of sex trade. In your mother, we discovered the sordid tale of bride trafficking. After she gave birth to you and two of your siblings, your father left her with three of you. She had to survive and she wanted

you three to live. She was sold to a man in Rajasthan as an unmarried woman. It is a common practice in Rajasthan, Haryana and parts of Uttar Pradesh which have skewed sex ratio. Due to lack of females, men often buy brides. It is slavery in its new avatar. You told us that child trafficking is very much alive and is thriving like never before. People, who sold your mother to a man in Rajasthan, promised her that they would take care of her children you and your siblings. But then they sold you three also. How much money they got is not important. What matters is that you were sold. Let us hope that after your demise, the government gets serious about this issue. You brought the focus back to thousands of children who are abandoned by their parents. You were found in Delhi, where two children are abandoned every day. It is time we had a system where parents are discouraged from abandoning the children and in case, they do so, the authorities should devise strategies to reunite the child to his or her biological parents. You also told us about the apathy with which police deals with cases like yours. Police arrested 13 people in your case. It was an exception. Continuous media coverage moved things. Otherwise, such cases become mere numbers and work as database for police records or for someone doing research on abandoned children. Thanks for showing us the mirror, baby Falak. May you rest in peace!

Baby Falak case:

5 things that will happen next
The teenager who brought Falak in, Baby Falaks mother, media coverage of the issue - it will all come into focus soon.
Danish Raza, Mar 16, 2012

e give you the five things that are likely to happen after Baby Falaks tragic passing:

1. Police has produced before the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB), the teenager, who brought baby Falak to AIIMS on January 18. This is different from the stand police took when it produced the teenager before the child welfare committee (CWC) where the girl was considered a victim rather than a preparator. If the JJB finds her responsible for baby Falaks condition (and death), she will be sent to institutional case for three years under JJ act. JJB can release her after admonition or under the supervision of a probation officer.

area which are hubs of flesh trade. Police is yet to take any action against the hotel owners. As of now, no raid has been conducted based on the leads given by the teenager. 3. Teenager also told the counselors about another trafficked child. So far, police has not been able to trace that child. Perhaps the issue of rescuing another child victim has been taken very casually. We can imagine the plight of the girl who is still in the custody of traffickers and pimps, ruled the child welfare committee on March 13. 4. Falaks mother lives in Nari Niketan home in Delhi. If she is found guilty of abandoning Falak (Section 317 of Indian Penal Code), she will be convicted. However, she has said that she herself is a victim of trafficking. Sessions court will decide on the same. 5. Delhi High Court has formed a committee to formulate guidelines for media to cover issues involving children/ juvenile. The committee is expected the submit draft guidelines to the court in first week of May. In baby Falak case, CWC issued show cause notice to AIIMS asking why action should not be taken against it to allow unrestricted media entry in ICU where Falak was being treated. Child Welfare Committee also directed police to prepare a list of media personnel who accessed the ICU.

2. During her counseling sessions, teenager had given details of hotels in Delhis Mahipalpur

Female infanticide:
Affluent South Delhi tops capital chart

Maxwell Pereira, a former Joint Commissioner of Police, says that female infanticide happens at a larger scale in affluent societies than in underprivileged neighborhoods

FP Staff, Apr 12, 2012 Economic development does not invariably reduce womens disadvantages in mortality. The Census of 2012 records the child sex ratio (0-6 years) at 914/1000, which is the lowest ratio since Independence. The Government has formed the Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1994 which was brought into operation from January 1, 1996 with an objective to check female feticide. But the significant drop in the child sex ratio has clearly shown that the act has failed in its objective.

axwell Pereira, a former Joint Commissioner of Police for the New Delhi Range of the Capital City, says that female infanticide happens at a larger scale in affluent societies than in underprivileged neighborhoods. In Delhi, again South Delhi has the highest percentage, he said in an interview with CNN IBN. After the unfortunate death of Baby Afreen yesterday the question of the safety of the girl child has surfaced again. Amartya Sen, in his famous essay More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing observes that

Minor girls raped

in Allahabad juvenile home
The matter came to light when a six year-old girl narrated the horrendous happenings inside the juvenile home to a city-based couple.
PTI, Mar 6, 2012 had adopted her recently. The horrified couple contacted the juvenile homes superintendent Urmila Gupta who got an FIR registered at the Shivkuti police station against Ojha, a native of Siwan district in neighbouring state of Bihar. Police claim that three girls from the juvenile home were taken for medical tests following Ojhas confession and their sexual assault has been confirmed. Meanwhile, district probation officer Ila Pant has suspended the superintendent Urmila Gupta for negligence while the services of Ojha, who was a contractual employee, have been terminated.

llahabad: In a shocking incident, the alleged rape of at least three girls aged less than 10 years inside a state-run juvenile home in Allahabad has come to light following which its superintendent has been placed under suspension while a peon accused of the heinous crime has been arrested, police said. The accused Vidyabhushan Ojha (52) was arrested from the vicinity of the juvenile home, which is situated in Shivkuti locality of the city, Thursday night and police claim that he has confessed to have sexually assaulted a number of inmates. The matter came to light when a six year-old girl narrated the horrendous happenings inside the juvenile home to a city-based couple who

Our judgmental protectors

Why women deserve to be raped

A Tehelka sting aimed at 23 police stations across the Delhi NCR reveals that our men in uniform have a strict litmus test when it comes determining real rape cases. And according to their stringent criteria, almost all women deserve to be raped.
Lakshmi Chaudhry, Apr 9, 2012

From the Delhi police:

ne of the most depressing aspects of writing about the recent string of rape cases are the responses these kinds of stories inevitably evoke. The Internet trolls come out in swarms to condemn the victim: for being out late at night, for being divorced, talking to strangers, drinking, dressing provocatively, and, the worst, for making it all up. Who are these people, Id wonder, who genuinely believe that a woman would deliberately provoke sexual assault, and failing that, pretend shed been raped and go public with it. Because, really, being a rape victim in India is so much fun. First, youre humiliated by the cops, then your personal life is put on trial by the media. After a couple of years being ground down by the judicial process, you get your moment in court where youre expected to recount every detail and I mean, every detail in open court. All this only to find that in the great majority of cases, its all been for naught because the original investigation was shoddy and flawed. Your assailants go scot-free while you are tarnished for life as damaged goods in our enlightened society. Can any sane, right-thinking person really, really believe that most women deliberately incite rape or invent rape charges? As it turns out, the online creeps are in good company of the Delhi-NCR police. A Tehelka sting aimed at 23 police stations across the NCR reveals a level of misogyny that is not unexpected, but is shocking nevertheless. [Do check out the testimonies of these police officers in detail here. The Tehelka expose is unpleasant but required reading] Now, I could skewer these attitudes as absurd, regressive, and just plain wrong. But having waded through the testimonies of these men who are Station House Officers, not the average havaldar I was left shaking with rage and fear. I realised that according to stringent criteria of the Delhi Police, almost all women deserve to be raped. And heres why: One, she is not in a salwar kameez or sari, at all times Most urban professional women wear a lot of

skirts, jeans, blouses, and dresses. And they usually carefully calibrate what they wear according to where they will be: out on the street or at an upmarket bar/restaurant. But all this effort is pointless because as Satbir Singh, Additional SHO of Sector 31 Police Station, Faridabad, puts it: Ladkiya jo hai unko yahan tak yahan tak (he gestures to mean that women should cover their entire body, then carries on speaking) Skirt pehenti hai. Blouse dalti hai; poora nahi dalti hai. Dupatta nahi dalti. Apne aapko dikhawa karti hai. Baccha uske taraf akarshit hota hai. (Girls should be covered from here to here They wear skirts, blouses, that dont cover them fully. Dont wear a dupatta. They display themselves. A kid will naturally be attracted to her.) Sub-Inspector Arjun Singh, SHO of Surajpur Police Station, Greater Noida, clarifies the position further: She is dressed in a manner that people get attracted to her. In fact, she wants them to do something to her. In other words, unless a woman is fully covered from head to toe at all times she wants men to rape her. Two, if a woman is in a sexual relationship with one man, then she deserves to be raped by him and all his friends. Dharamveer Singh, Additional SHO at Indirapuram Police Station in Ghaziabad, tells Tehelka: Its very rare that a girl is forcefully picked up by 10 boys. A girl who gets into a car with boys is never innocent. If she does, she definitely has a relationship with at least one of them. Three, she keeps the company of drunk men. Is it bad judgement to drink with strangers in India? Yes. And many of us are far too cautious to slam back the vodka unless we are amongst good friends. But who cares since our men in uniform seem to think that alcohol and opportunity is sufficient and just cause for rape: Roop Lal of Sector 40, Gurgaon, sought to find a rationale to the occurrence of gang-rape: Jaise hum log baithe hai, zyaada daaru pee li. Chalte peeli. Behnchodh, phekh saala, phir to aise hi hoga. Raat bhar rakh li. Uska jawab kya degi wo apne gharwalon ko, ki jo ek ghante ke liye keh kar gayi hai, aur poori

night main kahan gayi thi. To maa-baap to poochenge, bhai bhi poochega. Jinka samaaj hai woh to poochte hai (Say we are sitting and had one drink too many while on the move its obvious that itll happen. Keep her for the entire night. What will she tell her parents? She was supposed to be away for an hour and has ended up being out the entire night. Parents will question, so will her brother. Society will ask questions.) So when a man drinks, he turns into a sexcrazed animal ready to rape the nearest woman. When a woman drinks, she is a slut looking to be raped. Ergo, women should not drink, nor should she place herself anywhere in the vicinity of men who do. (A rule that includes being in a bar late at night) And even if one of the men happens to be your boyfriend, it is no cause to let your guard down because: See reason #2.

In fact, according to 17 of the 30 policemen interviewed by Tehelka that real rape cases are rare: There are cases but 70 percent involve consensual sex. Only if someone sees, or the money is denied, it gets turned into rape Sub-Inspector Manoj Rawat of Noidas Sector 24 Police Station is far more skeptical: Everything in NCR happens with mutual understanding. My personal view is that there are one or two percent rape cases in NCR. And six, a woman deserves to be raped because she reported the rape. The most astounding revelation in the Tehelka expose is this: most rape complaints are false, motivated by either vindictiveness or monetary gain. Its an excellent example of circular logic: Tehelka asked Yogender Singh Tomar, Additional SHO, Sector 39, Noida, if it was easy for a rape victim to approach the police. His answer left us shocked: Aasaan nahi hota uske liye. Bezzati se sabhi darti hai. Akhbaar baazi se bhi darti hai. Asliyat main wahin aati hai jo dhande main lipt hoti hai (Its never easy for the victim. Everyone is scared of humiliation. Everyones wary of media and society. In reality, the ones who complain are only those who have turned rape into a business). In other words, if youre really raped, you would never complain. If you complain, you were not really raped. So heres the bottomline, ladies and gentleman. If we were to apply the this insane litmus test to all the women we know friends, family members, distant relatives, colleagues, maids, or acquaintances none of us would make the grade. According to the Delhi police, we all deserve to be raped. [The smattering of quotes in this story don't do full justice to the original Tehelka story which deserves to be read in its entirety. I highly recommend you do so, if only to read these testimonies in Hindi to get the flavour of the language used by the cops.]

Four, a girl deserves to be raped because her mother is a slut. When all else fails, blame the mom. That seems to be the reasoning of the investigating officer in the Noida gang rape case which involved a Class X student. Heres Ram Maliks justification for the rape of a minor: The girls mother is divorced. Shes living with another man from the Yadav community. Shes 48 whereas the man is 28. Its inevitable the two daughters will be wayward, isnt it? Five, a woman deserves to be raped because she belongs to the upper class or the lower class. Upper class women dont know how to behave or dress modestly, which invites trouble. They are also either high class hookers, or alcohol and drug-addicted floozies. Their lower class peers, however, are just looking to make a quick buck.

Representative image

Rape is never ever my fault

A 23-year-old woman gets gang-raped in Gurgaon. The government has the solution get all the women off the streets by 8 pm. Whats the real problem here? The women? Or the rapists?
Sandip Roy, Mar 14, 2012

The great Indian cop defence:

Just one day after a young woman got gangraped in Gurgaon, the city bosses have come up with a slew of security guidelines. Women would have probably been banned from working in bars but the Supreme Court in 2007 overturned a Victorian rule that prevented them from doing just that. So Gurgaon has had to come up with new rules. They based it on a Shops and Commercial Establishments Act from Punjab. Why Gurgaon, which is in Haryana, is taking refuge in a law from Punjab, is another matter.

ho says the government cannot move fast?

Gurgaons security rules basically boil down to this its not their problem, its yours. Heres what women need to do. They cannot work after 8 pm. If they do, they need to tell the labour department in advance. If they work in a bar, they should not get too friendly with the drinkers. Of course, they should follow a dress code. Heres what companies need to do. They must maintain a logbook of vehicles used to transport women employees home, complete with vehicle registration numbers and the drivers names. They need to install CCTVs at pick up points to make sure women are not forcibly lifted.

(Does that mean if she went willingly with someone who promised her a ride home, she deserved to be raped?) Heres what pubs need to do. They have to maintain records of everyone who comes in, keep photocopies of identity cards and submit them to the authorities every two weeks. They must create an IP address and provide internet access to the cops so they have a 360-degree Big Brother view of every nook and corner of the premises. Even the malls in which the pubs are located have a to-do list. They should turn off the electricity if the pub stays open after hours. The public also has to shoulder its share of the responsibility. They should send complaints about any violations of all aforementioned rules to dcgrg@hry.nic.in or dcgrg@nic.in. Finally, heres what the police need to do. Nothing. Except now that there are lots of new rules to flout and bend, as well as a morass of bureaucracy, it creates an excellent money-making machine for your unfriendly neighbourhood cops. Instead of providing actual security out on the dark streets, the cops now get to spot check any of the 600 odd pubs in Gurgaon to see if they are keeping up with their paperwork. They can also sit in the police station and get their jollies from watching couples necking in a dark corner of some pub a free peep show to liven up those boring evenings at the thana.

out and about at night, as opposed to their lack of safety and the callous police response, as the real problem. Eventually they all come up with some kind of Cinderella hour which will separate the good girls from the bad ones. In Gurgaon women should not work after 8 pm. In Kolkata, after its recent rape case, the government has decided pubs should not stay open after 11 pm. Since Mamata Banerjee thinks all rapes in West Bengal are CPM conspiracies, that is apparently the witching hour when the comrades get together to plot rapes. Her Haryana CM counterpart Bhupinder Singh Hooda was less dismissive of the rape. The incident was very unfortunate, he told the media. He thinks advanced technology for the police is the answer. In the Gurgaon case, the victims brother approached a police van. They shrugged him off after they called the victims mobile and the rapist answered it and pretended they were dropping the young woman home. Mr Hooda did not explain how advanced technology would have prevented that scenario.

The police admittedly cannot be everywhere at all times. But that does not mean that the onus of public safety falls entirely on the public. After a recent spate of robberies in the Salt Lake suburbs of Kolkata, the police initially told frazzled homeowners, many of them elderly and living alone on limited incomes, that they should install state-of-the-art security systems; that they needed to register the names and addresses of all domestic helps and casual labourers working anywhere on their building premises; that Every rape story follows the same sorry track. At they should never leave their houses unattended first there is the character assassination of the especially if they are going on vacation. What victim, sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant about the fact that desperate calls to 100, the what she did, or did not do, what she wore, why emergency line at the police station, that went was she out that late, whats her love life like unanswered? After all (the policeman) has to (she called both her husband AND a boyfriend go to the toilet once in awhile, retorted a senior from her mobile, well, well.) The word raped officer. appears in quotes in media headlines. Then the cops deny that it is a critical problem anyway If the police are going to wash their hands off and accuse the media of blowing it out of prothe entire affair, here is an alternative solution portion. This is followed by security guidelines thats getting some buzz on Twitter: how about which inevitably view the presence of women a curfew on all the men in Gurgaon after 8 pm?

not an answer
After the rape of a 23-year-old girl who worked at a pub in Gurgaon, the police have issued a ban on employing bouncers and escorts in pubs. However, these measures will only address the symptoms, not the disease.
Anant Rangaswami, Mar 21, 2012

Banning bouncers is

Rape in Gurgaon:

ollowing the rape of a 23-year-old girl who worked at a pub in Gurgaon, the Delhi police have decided that pubs and discotheques cannot employ bouncers anymore and escorts will have to stay away. The rape occurred outside Sahara Mall on March 12, when six men stopped a cab, dragged the girl out and forced her into their Maruti 800 car. She was abducted by the men at 2:30 am from the Mehrauli-Gurgaon road. This morning, Hindustan Times reports the decision made by the police in Gurgaon: Pubs and discotheques in Gurgaon cannot employ bouncers anymore and have been instructed to keep out escorts who help male guests gain entry.The Gurgaon Police issued the ban on Tuesday following the March 12 abduction of a pub worker from outside Sahara Mall and her gangrape. The pubs have also been told to allow entry by couples only, the report says. Weve seen a number of knee-jerk reactions to similar incidents: pubs being forced to shut down early as we see in Bengaluru; similar suggestions in Mumbai (thankfully not enforced) and so on. These solutions will never work theyre addressing the symptoms, not the disease. And here we come to The Broken Windows theory. You can read more about the theory here . There is so much police administrations can learn from this approach. Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if its unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars, say social scientists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling. A successful strategy for preventing vandalism, say the books authors, is to fix the problems when they are small. Repair the broken windows within a short time, say, a day or a week, and the tendency is that vandals are much less

likely to break more windows or do further damage. Clean up the sidewalk every day, and the tendency is for litter not to accumulate (or for the rate of littering to be much less). Problems do not escalate and thus respectable residents do not flee a neighborhood. The theory thus makes two major claims: that further petty crime and low-level anti-social behavior will be deterred, and that major crime will, as a result, be prevented, Wilson and Kelling add. What the authorities should do is to look out for the broken windows in the context of crimes against women. If rapes and abductions are increasing in incidence in Gurgaon, its rooted in the fact that there has been little or no visible action in complaints against similar crimes earlier the first broken windows. Perhaps the first broken window in Gurgaon was the killing of Jessica Lal . It took more than 7 years to find the killers guilty despite the killing being conducted in the presence of, literally, tens of witnesses. The time elapsed was a broken window, encouraging others to break more windows commit more crimes against women in the knowledge that police action and court decisions are very slow. Cosmetic changes of rules and laws will, in no manner, be a deterrent to crimes; indeed, such ill-advised rules such as what is being proposed in Gurgaon affects the entertainment options of law-abiding citizens, including women. What does one do when women are raped in broad daylight in trains, as they are? Ban train travel? Or if a woman is raped in a cinema hall? Shut down the theatres? What is required is that perpetrators of such crimes need to be brought to book and punished quickly and firmly immediately suggesting to those who think of committing similar crimes that, if caught, they can look forward to incarceration or more serious punishments. Look out for the broken windows in the context of crimes against women; make it easy for women to lodge FIRs without fear or embarrassment; act swiftly and decisively against the perpetrators and the incidence of crimes will reduce.

Mamata rubbishes rape claim,

says it is to malign states image
PTI, Feb 28, 2012 the culture of the party has gone. The woman had complained that she was gangraped when she resisted dacoits looting passengers of a local train near Panchundi. Stating that Delhi had witnessed six rapes and Noida one gangrape recently, she said, Bengal is a civilised place. If someone wants to malign the image of the state by making false propaganda. Just as a murderer is punished the conspirator will also not be spared. Stating that her government would not allow negligence by the police in attending to genuine complaints, she said, But at the same time, the police have a responsibility to ascertain if a complaint is genuine.

olkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today denied reports that a woman was gang-raped on Sunday on a train at Pachundi in the Katwa area of Burdwan district. She said those attempting to tarnish the image of the state would not be spared. A complaint of rape has been filed. Nothing has been found. Where is the evidence? I do not think any incident of rape has taken place, Banerjee told a press conference. The complainant had admitted that her husband was a CPI(M) supporter, Banerjee said. I hear a political party has planned to use its workers to cry rape. I do not understand where

India's angry young rapists

Safety of numbers
The horror of gang rapes hides behind the numbers. It makes the men invisible like a pack while the focus shifts to the woman. We must yank the cloak of invisibility off gang rape.
Shiv Viswanathan, Mar 17, 2012

Guiltlessness of gang rape:

he recent reports on the increasing frequency of gang rape raises a set of unsettling questions. We all know it happens but we do not question it as a happening. As a wag put it, Woman gang raped is becoming a weekly headline as much as Woman loses gold chain was in the sixties. Gang rape is a strange ritual. Unlike rape, which is a one to one encounter, gang rape has an assembly line quality which violates the woman again and again. It is an assault in sequence, where the brutality repeats itself to emphasise the animal desire of man, not as an individual but a species. An individual rape may focus on desire, an erotic need for a person, a need to control a person. Gang rape is sexuality as an urge, lived out as indifference. Five men entering a woman turn her into a vessel, a machine for assuaging need. The asymmetry of the encounter is both horrific and meaningless. It is as if the man is indifferent to the woman, except as a point of entry. In that sense, gang rape is more savage, brutal and more difficult to comprehend. After the encounter, the men acquire an invisibility of gender, number and collectivity. They become nameless while the woman becomes a type to be singled out for criticism. The victim has to account for her presence, identity, and behavior while the men fade into anonymity. The act of kidnapping often precedes the rape and threat virtually follows it. Our sensitivity does not extend to the fate of the woman. Instead of sympathy, we provide sociology, often reading it as a biological act. The closure is an almost flippant men will be men. It is almost as if the collective nature of the act provides a sense of apparent legitimacy. The question that one must ask is: why is gang rape treated with indifference? Does one womans rape look like a crime and gang rape look like a trend? Does the fact of number make it a biological act, a force of nature we dare not talk about? Does the fact that the woman is usually abandoned and left in trauma, like an empty vessel, add to the vulnerability and silence? Society provides gang rapes with a coating of invisibility or inevitability, which we must chal-

lenge. There is nothing epidemic to gang rape. For all its bestial quality, it is a premeditated act of brutality which needs to be treated as such. The genres of explanation for a rape and a gang rape tend to be different. A single rapist is confronted as psychology or pathology; he is law and order problem. A gang rape summons policy and prohibitions against the women. It is she who is seen as a law and order problem vitiating morals in a region. There is a touch of excess which works against the woman. Crime in collectivity seems less guiltless. Thus gang rape creates the mask of two false sociologies. The man becomes a collectivity and as a gang seems to have a different persona. The woman rather than being constructed as a victim, as a survivor, is in fact, seen as first cause. She is seen as an unbounded figure available as she moves in the night, responsible for her own plight because she is out after eight. The men become Pavlovian dogs salivating at a woman. The network of anonymity, invisibility and indifference creates a narrative which is less like an event and more like an abstract statistic. People read the report as they read news on weather. It is a social weather forecast about which they can do little. It has this air of episodic inevitability. Urbanism, consumerism and scarcity explain it away. We need to break the language which gives violence an impersonal quality and name the perpetrators. Secondly, we must challenge the narratives that seek to explain away the event by locating cause, the source of the problem in women. The observation, a woman in the night is a woman out of place is a false rationale. Why is it when it comes to independent women, we ration freedom and respectability in pipettes? We need to make the perpetrators more visible. List out their names, localities, residence, and village origins. Print their photographs. Till there is a cycle of humiliation, the rapist acts as gutlessly as an animal in a rut. Unless we put the perpetrator on the defensive, the cycle of indifference will be hard to break. Deterrence is the beginning of exorcism where the victim can feel whole again.

help culture
Police say the victim of a Gurgaon rape case was working as a escort in a pub and the persons who raped her knew her and possibly planned it.
Danish Raza, Mar 13, 2012

The ugly side of

Gurgaon gang-rape:

hey are known as female escorts or by a comparatively polite synonym help. Working in shifts that begin at 9 pm and end at 2 am, they are found hanging around pubs. Depending on money offered- ranging anywhere between Rs 500 and Rs 5,000- they accompany male visitors into the pub, dance with them, share drinks and offer other services. While a majority of them are not employees of the pubs, some take commissions for bringing in men and making them loyal customers. According to the Gurgaon police, the 23-yearold victim of yesterdays gang- rape is one of them. She was not associated with the pub. She used to accompany men to pubs, Maheshwar Dayal, DCP (crime), Gurgaon, told Firstpost. While some may see the declaration that the victim a female escort may be a tactic of the police to convey the message that she had invited trouble, Dayals statement points out to a culture that thriving in pubs in Delhi and NCR. However, working as a female escort does not mean she was inviting rape; and male customers should know where to draw a line. Her presence in the pub after midnight was also not a crime. However, the fact is that the availability of female escorts or help has added a new dimension to pub culture in the nations capital.

For pub owners, it is a lucrative deal as female escorts increase business. They are offered payments by single men who want to enter couples only events at pubs or pubs which have curbs on stag entry. Then there are groups consisting of men who are on the look out for a girl to dance with. They deal with the client outside the pub. While they are inside with men, we dont know whether they are actually with them or are just escorting them for money. It is impossible to differentiate, said a Gurgaon pub owner, requesting anonymity. On many occasions, if a deal goes sour the result is a brawl. There are many instances when women alleged that they did not get the promised money. Sometimes, a client looks out for a particular escort and when he finds her accompanying someone else, he turns violent, said a pub owner. According to the police, the accused in this case were known to the victim and they knew her shift timings. They were waiting for her to come out of the mall, Dayal said. The police is still to make arrests in the case.

The angry young men of

new India

Gang rape:

India has changed, the women have changed, both out of choice and necessity. But what the continuing epidemic of rapes reveals is that some men have not. Change has made them rich, but also very angry.
Lakshmi Chaudhry, Mar 16, 2012

I did not struggle, because I thought if I did they would kill me, she says. Four days after the gang rape in Gurgaon and endless speculation about the morals and character of the victim she has finally spoken out in the Times of India. [Read the story here] The details of the trauma are in turn nightmarish, sad and enraging. Remember the call that the helpful cop made to her mobile? Well, heres her side of it (Vineeta is not her real name): They took Vineeta to Rajiv Nagar in Old Gurgaon, where their friend was waiting in his room in the first floor of a house. The staircase was from inside the house. But one of them covered my mouth with his hand and I could not shout. When a call came on my mobile which was with one of the men, he said I was with a friend and that he would drop me home. I tried to snatch the phone and managed to shout please save me. But they took the phone away from me and slapped me several times. How must it feel, to have a policeman call your phone at that moment when you know you are doomed and are yet hoping for a miracle and do nothing to save you? But more revealing than the crime are the details of her life. Vineeta is in many ways the new Indian, trying to find a foothold in the booming economy driven by aspirational demand. A failed marriage has left to fend for herself and her three-year old son. He hasnt been here for a while, she tells Tanushree Roy Chowdhury, who insightfully notes, The apparently failed marriage is another thing she seems to have reconciled to. Thats the kind of life she has been living: pretty much everything in her life seems to have had a mediocre beginning and unhappy ending. Education, marriage, work She tried to earn money as a help at the Sahara nightclub where contrary to what the nightclub owner told Firstpost management would hire these women as a way to get around Gurgaons couples only rule. They never showed up in the employment register, but the money was decent. She gave it up for a while but went back again: But I have to make a living, so finally I went there on Monday with my 15-yearold brother as my escort and asked for work.

They said okay. You see, the pub needs women to get men in. A big mistake, we can all declare with the wisdom of hindsight. But to do so is to deny the reality that Vineeta is as much a part of the new India of malls, pubs, restaurants, and clubs as any of us the India we all partake, even revel in, one way or another. This booming consumer economy is manned by innumerable young women who are forging new lives outside the home, be it as sales clerks, call centre workers, or nightclub helpers. And they pay the price in terms of their safety. Vineeta is no different from Rinku Das, call centre worker in Kolkata, whose 16-year-old brother was killed last year trying to save her from a gang of drunken men. At the time, my Firstpost colleague, Sandip Roy wrote: The shadow of the tragedy of Rinku and Rajib Das touches our house too. Our cook, a young woman, lives in the same small town where the perpetrators accosted Rinku. A single mother separated from her husband, she lives alone, her little boy in a boarding school. She, too, takes the local train to work in Kolkata every morning. At the end of the day, she gets off at the same station and takes the same tease and hit trail home. Everyone knows its a bad road, she says. But what can you do? You have to work. And for all the horror of the gang rape, Vineetas dilemma too remains the same. Asked if shell go back to work, she replies, No, not in a while. But I have to earn a living. India has changed, the women have changed, both out of choice and necessity. But what the continuing epidemic of rapes reveals is that some men have not. Thats the main thrust of a perceptive op-ed piece by Srijana Mitra also in this mornings TOI (Theyre really on a roll today!). Mitra turns the spotlight back on the attackers, seven young men from Rohtak with not much education but a lot of money to spend. So why did they rape Vineeta? Mitra offers a lengthy answer worthy of serious consideration [Read it in its entirety here]:

While one part of Gurgaon thus got sewn into a global economy of software companies, financial organisations and technical groups the districts cluster of malls, multinationals and BPOs nicknamed Indias Millennium City another part remained cloistered in rural hamlets, awash suddenly in big money, with no deeper education or wider sensitisation about what caused its arrival. The money existed uncomfortably alongside highly conservative social attitudes expressing themselves, as historian Nonica Dutta describes, in veiling women and providing khap justice to infringers. But this increasing gap between the two Gurgaons or rather, two Indias made these young men, awash in new money increasingly angry: The fury came from a new feeling of inferiority, backed but not assuaged by weapons and other stimulants. This resentment was directed towards those seen as audacious interlopers, arriving on what was once their land It is

angry incomprehension at this situation which causes men to feel less than that and desperate to assert the opposite. Such fury often directs itself into a manhood that can be yelled out collectively hence, the gang-rape, the ultimate weapon of pack sexuality, frenziedly asserting dominance on someone it believes weaker than itself. Vineeta, in the mind of these men, was asking for it: as a woman out at nightclub, an outsider who didnt belong, an uppity city girl who was willing to take their money but would never be sexually available to them. And its an attitude shared by the Gurgaon policemen who come from the same world as the accused rapists. Its easy to acknowledge unequal development in terms money, to speak of malnourished children, suicidal farmers or displaced tribals. But it is far more difficult for us to recognise the lopsided evolution of our culture which uneasily straddles two worlds its contradictions subsidised by the bodies of women.

Readers weigh in:

Blaming the victim is insulating to men

By, Bob Blame the victim the defense of the defenseless. "Don't wear provocative clothing." Dont go out alone at night. "Don't be the only girl in a car full of 10 men." "Dont get drunk." Dont have a mother who has a younger man as a lover. Heck, the excuses could conceivably go on, and on, and on. This idea about women who are assaulted inadvertently 'deserving' their horrifying predicament also suggests that men are like animals and cannot control themselves or distinguish between right and wrong, so the burden falls on the woman to make really, really sure that she is not doing anything at all to invite a man to rape her. Why aren't men insulted by this insinuation? Instead of men saying that I am not an animal, and if a woman says no I can walk away, why do we instead say women should not show cleavage? What sort of Neanderthal thinking is this? We see cleavage and we immediately think the victim asked for it? RAPE is ALWAYS unwanted, ALWAYS uninvited and ALWAYS WRONG! And civilized, decent men should take a stand against it, instead of trying to justify it, and blame the victim. 'NO' means 'NO!', and this is the ONLY signal to be interpreted by a man, even if the woman saying it is drunk, wearing a lot make-up, in a mini-skirt and in a car with 10 men.

Media must play a larger role

By, Rg594 Think of the last three rape cases, and then think about what you know about the victim. Chances are, that you will know her name, seen many photographs, her age, her family history , what she does, what she was doing that day, where she was going, what she was wearing, how drunk she was etc etc. Now think of the rapist(s). Do you know what they look like? Do you even remember reading their goddamn names??? The media is responsible for public attitude towards rape. The media harasses the victim possibly even more than the police. Every detail is brought into the limelight- But about the VICTIM, not the PERPETRATOR! While the entire public sits and judges every aspect of the victims life- complete with photos, history, relationships. behavior, family background and clothing, the rapist(s) enjoy almost complete anonymity!! Why dont we publish photos of the accused rapists, investigate THEIR lives, THEIR historyPut THEM on public trial, not the victim.

Put the blame where it lies

By, Aakash Mukherjee As a man, I feel sad and ashamed at the moral bankruptcy of these people who were assigned the job of protecting society and uphold its morals. Rape is rape. A crime. And perhaps the most heinous one. We men might get beaten up, bloodied but a woman that gets raped remains brutally scarred for her entire life. Frankly, I don't understand why we debate that what-wasshe-wearing?, what-time?, must-have-gottenhim-aroused. Rape is hardly about sex and it's almost always about exerting power. To a perverted mind, it's the best game ever. Total domination - a sexual power equation that's lopsided totally in the rapist's favor. Girls as young as 2 years old get raped, young boys get raped and grown up men also rape other grown up men. What's the arousal thing involved here? But to be honest, as a guy who was born and brought up in Delhi, the cops don't surprise me at all. Such disgusting mindsets are the norm, not the exception among most people in U.P., Haryana and neighborhoods, women included. Now, are there women who press fake rape charges? Yes and they should be punished. But don't tar all women who actually went through that nightmare. Real men don't rape, beat up or mistreat their women. Only losers who suffer from complexes do. But things won't change since in India, we just talk, shout, debate and argue ourselves to death. No one suggests the cure, we just shout in the agonies of the symptoms. Anyways, sab chalta hai, after all.

Rapists must be named and shamed

By, Rex I think we need to turn the tables of publicity on the rapists. Do not let them cover their faces when they are being led away by the cops. Let their photographs be put up on giant hoardings along Mehrauli Gurgaon road, let them and their family feel the shame of what they did. I'm reminded of 'The girl with the dragon tattoo' - the protagonist is raped by her supposed guardian, and she takes revenge on him later by tattooing 'I am a rapist pig' across his torso. So, dear Indian news channels, here's another TRP booster idea for you: Dig up and hound the rapists and their families and be sure to ask the classic question: "Ek masoom ladki ka balaatkaar karne ke baad aapko kaisa lag raha hai?'

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