Hyderabad: 405,861– that’s the number of crimes against women in India in 2019, revealed the National Crime Record Bureau’s “Crime in India” data this week. An average of 87 rape cases are reported every day in India, the report says. Many go unreported too.
It can be rightfully pointed out that the women in India are unsafe. The claim can be further soldiered by four brutal incidents of rape reported on the mainstream media in the past three days.
The Hathras gang rape case is a reminder of the evil that lurks in society.
Four members from the upper-caste Thakur community allegedly raped and brutally murdered a 19-year-old Dalit girl. Her assailants had left her in the fields half-strangled, bearing multiple fractures, tongue gashed, naked, bleeding and paralyzed. She later died at a hospital in Delhi on Tuesday after fighting for her life for two weeks.
Also, in the aftermath of the heinous crime which saw her body cremated in the dead of the night, seemingly without her family’s approval, with petrol and kerosene. In a complete U-turn, her forensic report now states that there was no sexual assault involved.
Amid the widespread outrage over the Hathras incident, yet another scheduled caste woman died in Balrampur district in Uttar Pradesh while being rushed to a hospital after her an alleged rape by two youths. The 22-year-old was an employee in a local private firm.
New incidents of rape came into the light just several hours after the gang-rape victims died in Hathras and Balrampur. According to reports, in Azamgarh, an 8-year-old girl was allegedly raped by her 20-year-old neighbor.
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In Bulandshahr, a teenage girl was allegedly raped by her neighbor at a village in Kakore on Wednesday night.
Before these incidents took place, entire Hyderabad in Telangana shook with the death of Nazia Begum on September 25, who committed suicide after alleged rape by the local TRS leader Madhu Yadav. Nazia was working as a servant-maid in Yadav’s house. The accused was taken into custody and Nirbhaya Act was invoked.
All the cases were reported and the accused were identified. In many of the assaults, the perpetrators go unidentified. How justice and subsequent safety can be guaranteed in such cases? There is an apparent outrage in all cases, but how much outrage is sufficient to make things right? We do not know.