My dear Kunchu,
The Rachna-Rathod conversation here has come out very, very well. It was a high wire act, and you have managed it beautifully, without a single false note.
As for the argument that arresting pimps or killing a Sikandar will not solve the flesh trade and human trafficking, that is not really logical.
No police force, even if it is the cleanest and most efficient in the world, can eradicate these scourges, anywhere in the world, so long as there are the debased consumers who keep it going and keep in so very profitable. In this respect, it is exactly like the drug trade. If the consumers vanished, it would collapse overnight.
It is the same with the Delhi bus horror, as Sree has correctly pointed out. But the struggle has to go on regardless, even if progress is slow and incremental. While I am about it, I would like to share with all of you, at least with those who have the patience for it, some comments that I had written to an NRI friend of mine earlier today. I hope it answers some of your questions about this atrocity and its significance.
Shyamala Aunty
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The Delhi bus atrocity made me sick to the stomach for days.It is not that such things, or worse, have not happen to women elsewhere in India, especially in the rural areas. Even worse things befall the poor little girls from Nepal, Bangladesh, and parts of India (like Rachna) who are kidnapped or sold into the flesh trade in the metros. That is a living hell, and a very long drawn out one, and does not attract much media attention.
But this was in downtown Delhi at 9 pm, and it was horribly brutal, and that is what jump started the media. I was glad of the uproar, if only because all the long pending fast track courts for rape and murder are now being finally set up.
However, this outrage was no different from other such horrors that have been perpetrated on women everywhere, and in all ages. I remember reading about a particularly awful case of
1965, when a young girl, Kitty Genovese, was brutally attacked and murdered in the landing outside her apartment in a New York high rise, not too late at night. She screamed and screamed for help, but all her neighbours locked themselves into their flats and not one of them came out to help her. As there was only one assailant, even a couple of brave men could have saved her. But not one of those cowards even tried.
Here in India, there are cases of young men who tried to help a girl in distress and were set upon by the same goons and wounded or even killed themselves.
Nor is it a question of tightening the laws; they are quite tight as it is, for in such cases, even if the girl does not die, the guilty can be given a life sentence. It is more a question of ensuring very prompt investigation and swift sentencing.In India, there is so much of a backlog of cases in the courts that years go by before a verdict is given in the High Court or Supreme Court.
Then there is bribing and intimidation of witnesses by friends or family of the accused that sabotages the police case. This was what initially happened in the Jessica Lall shooting-and-murder case, until public pressure produced a turn around.
This last too is nothing new. It was and is exactly the same way that Mafia bosses got away and still get away with any number of murders, not to speak of an assortment of other crimes. After all, the FBI was able to nail Al Capone only on a tax evasion charge!
In this case, there is no question as to the guilt of the accused, and as the poor girl has now died and it is a murder charge,
they will all, I am sure, be eventually hanged, this being correctly classified as a rarest of the rare case, because of the wanton brutality. That is to say, 5 of the 6 will be hanged, after their cases go thru the whole process, right up their mercy pleas to the President.
The 6th, who was apparently just under 18 when the crime was committed, will probably go to a correctional centre for 3 years and will then walk free, ready to commit similar crimes.With the age of the perpetrators of very serious crimes dipping alarmingly the world over these days, they need to lower the age ceiling under the Juvenile Justice act from the present 18 to 16. I am sure they will do it, but of course that cannot be retroactive, so this juvenile thug will escape.
Unless of course some other inmate in the remand home beats him to death. The other 5 accused are being brutalised daily by fellow prisoners in the Tihar Jail, who, hardened criminals though they are, are horrified by what these goons did to that poor kid.
You see, it is really more a question of eroding the MCP mentality in so many men at all levels, right up to the judiciary,on the one hand, and punishing the guilty in crimes against women speedily on the other. This last might materialise soon; as I noted above, a number of dedicated fast track courts are being set up for such cases. As for the first,
it is precisely because Indian women are coming out into the economic mainstream all over the country and becoming far more independent that there is of late this backlash, and more crimes against women, especially in the big cities. Fighting that will be for the long haul.
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hey everyone!!next part
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