That women in India are unsafe is not an overstatement. It is the grim reality backed by hard evidence. And today, rapes and crimes against women is the new normal (“Victim’s kin seek death penalty for murderer,” Nov.30, Gulf Today).

Reality bites. Today it’s your daughter, tomorrow its mine. It’s only a matter of time before the next victim is our kin, neighbour, friend or colleague. Or it just could be the unknown girl sitting with her friend by the roadside or the girl who finds herself stranded because someone tampered with her bike. There is no method to this madness

 A few days ago it was the gang rape of the law student in Ranchi and now India awakes to the gruesome rape and murder of a 27-year-old vet in Hyderabad. Family members, members of women organisations, friends and lay people will gather once again on streets, raise slogans and demand that the rapists and murderers be hanged. And then ‘nothing’ until the next heinous crime rattles the masses.  

It’s painful, I know. But the long arms of the law in India are tragically short, thanks to the apathy of the administrative departments and of course the political machinery. Every mother, father, husband, brother, sister or colleague of the innocent victim brays for the blood of the perpetrator. But nothing happens because nothing is supposed to happen.

Today we have a raft of legislations with punishment tightened right up to death penalty. But the girl is still not safe. She is still raped and killed. She is still brutalized and tormented.

Every act of rape has a harmful ripple effect. Parents of girls living in the vicinity of the victim fear sending their daughter out unescorted. The same goes for female friends and colleagues of the victim. What has India come to? When will this stop?

S Moidu

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