Out of the numerous cases of rape reported in India in recent times, only one has caught the limelight. Just rape doesn’t cut it for the media and our conscience any more, the crime has to “bigger” and more complicated than that. Because in the time politics are being discussed around one, another gangrape has happened in U.P. a newborn girl has been stabbed to death in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh has seen more victims…..and these are the reported cases that somehow made the news for a brief, two minute period. 

This particular case is of a 19yr old Dalit girl who was gang-raped, tortured and almost strangled to death. The incident happened on 14 sept, in the Hatharas district of UP. The girl was found by her mother in the fields, where she was lying naked, bleeding from her vagina, and half dead. In a broken voice, she managed to named one of her attackers. Her family has alleged that initially, when she was taken to the station, the police refused to take their statement, and only later did they concede. 

She then was taken to Aligarh’s Jawaharlal Nehru Medical college, where her treatment was started. On 22 sept, when she was in a slightly better condition, her statement was recorded by the police wherein she alleged gangrape and named all her perpetrators. 

On 28 sept, she was transferred to Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital where her condition deteriorated. 

Yesterday, on 29th Sept, almost 8 years to the heartbreaking day when another rape victim had said, “I want to live”, she succumbed to her death. 

To add insult to injury her body was cremated on 30 sept in the wee hours of the night, allegedly without her family’s due consent. A last look was denied by the Hatharas police who formed a “human” chain to keep her family, reporters and villagers away. Keep in mind, the word human has been used only out of necessity here. 

A compensation of Rs.25 lakh is going to be given to her family, along with the Hatharas DM’s threats and insinuations that her family should somehow be grateful that she was raped, and not dead of corona. Because apparently that doesn’t warrant compensation money, and what parent wants their child alive when there’s cash to be had? 

The atrocities have not stopped here. A question has arisen about the need for pointing out the victim’s caste and whether this crime had any roots in casteism and discrimination. While statements like, “She was a human”, and “Her only fault was being a girl” are good in theory and seem extremely poetic, the practicality of the situation is completely different. Denying the very possibility of a rape, especially in this case, happening because of our country’s roots in caste based hierarchy, is either naive to the point of being stupid, or just downright privileged. 

It is extremely necessary to point out the key factors that play a role in such a case, for the sole reason of having a concrete area to improve and change. 

Rapes cannot happen without the existence of patriarchy, and it needs to be called out, the same way crimes against ‘lower castes’ cannot happen without a pre-existing system that drills into us who the “weak” and the “expendables” are, and it warrants just as severe a backlash.

Oscar Wilde has said, “Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.”. Any system that grants such power to a person, or a group of persons, without any justification apart from the accident of birth, is one hundred percent responsible for any acts of brutality committed by said group. 

However, society’s refusal to accept responsibility for perpetuating a system that prides itself on it’s brutal history is proof that this is just another case that has caught our fancy, but will soon be out of public mind and conscience in an attempt to induce utopia through thought, rather than action. 

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Aeiknor

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