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A Rape Occurs Every 20 Minutes In India, But What Has The State Done About It?
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By Lipi Mehta:
On September 17, 2014, I read something that filled me with hope. A tweet from the Press Information Bureau of India stating that Maneka Gandhi, Minister of Women and Child Development, was working towards setting up One-Stop Crisis Centres in every district of India for “protecting women at district level”.
#Nirbhaya centres will act as district hubs for protecting women at district level: Ms. Maneka Gandhi, Minister, @MinistryWCD
— PIB India (@PIB_India) September 17, 2014
This was welcome news for me and for thousands of others across the country. Today, we are at a juncture where tackling heinous crimes of sexual assault needs to be of utmost priority. One-Stop Crisis Centres (OSCCs) comprise of a doctor, a counsellor, a police official, and a visiting lawyer – all of these facilities under one roof – so that the treatment and rehabilitation of the survivors of sexual assault can start immediately.
An OSCC in every district would help speed up the medico-legal as well as the judicial process, especially in a country like ours, where the survivors and their families are often humiliated and are made to wait for hours before any action is taken. The need for setting up OSCCs in every district of India was highlighted by the Justice Usha Mehra Commission, which was set up to provide a recommendation for women’s safety and judicial procedures post the horrific gang-rape of a medical student in Delhi, in December 2012.
The student and her friend were severely injured and were left lying on the streets of Delhi, while the police were arguing about which jurisdiction the case fell in. Many a times, private hospitals direct the survivors to public hospitals as they don’t want to be involved in any court cases. At times, the unbelievable apathy of our judicial system has found place in the testimony of many survivors, some of them have been fighting for justice for as long as twenty years! In such a situation, I saw some hope in the official concept note released by the Women and Child Development Ministry on June 30, 2014, which mentioned that 660 ‘Nirbhaya centres’ or OSCCs would be set up across India. However, a few days ago, this tweet by President Pranab Mukherjee came as a huge surprise:
One Stop Crisis Centres, one in every State, are being set up to provide complete support to women affected by violence #PresidentMukherjee
— President of India (@RashtrapatiBhvn) February 23, 2015
From 660 centres to just 36? One rape in every 20 minutes and just one OSCC per state? The numbers just don’t match!
And how, Mr President, should a woman affected by violence in Solapur district come to Mumbai (or wherever the OSCC in Maharashtra will be), if she requires immediate treatment? And what about the areas where the residents have to travel for kilometres to reach even the nearest Public Health Centre, forget an OSCC in a city far away! Supreme Court Advocate, Karuna Nundy, quoted on the President’s tweet, saying that this was “almost an insult”.
Yes, it absolutely is! And this is something that all of us, as a nation, should be offended by!
Some might remember that the demand for OSCCs as per the Justice Mehra guidelines was also raised on Satyamev Jayate’s episode on rape. Post that episode, a large number of citizens supported the show’s demand, and a petition detailing the same was submitted by the show’s host, Aamir Khan, to PM Narendra Modi. After his meeting with PM Modi, Khan tweeted that the PM had assured him that he would look into all the matters raised by the petition. Moreover, one of the key elements in the BJP’s campaign before the 2014 General Elections was women’s safety, with one of their slogans being, ‘Bahut hua naari par vaar, abki baar Modi sarkar’.
Just three months after the Satyamev Jayate episode, because of the swift action taken by the Madhya Pradesh government, ‘Gauravi’, an OSCC along the lines of Justice Mehra’s recommendations was opened at J. P. Hospital in Bhopal. The NGO, ActionAid India, spearheaded this initiative and said in their initial report that in the first few weeks itself, over 2000 women had sought help and had been assisted and counselled. Apart from sexual assault, cases of domestic violence and dowry had also been seen. Women who have been helped by Gauravi have stated that they have found comfort and trust in the centre and its workers, and are now fighting for justice. Workers from ActionAid India had also met the President along with actor Shabana Azmi to talk about the need for OSCCs across India.
In spite of the existing knowledge of how much help OSCCs can provide the survivors of sexual assault, the budget for setting them up has been slashed from Rs 244.48 crore to Rs 18 crore. Moreover, Jagmati Sangwan of the All India Democratic Women’s Association said that they have information that the PMO office has remarked, “police are sensitive enough” and thus, there is no need for “such centres”. That truly, is an impractical solution to a mammoth problem, as Sangwan has rightly said.
Here is hoping that the government realizes that they have taken a step in the wrong direction, and swiftly works towards sensitization workshops, if nothing else, for police, doctors, lawyers, and the other stakeholders involved in a survivor’s journey to justice. If not, I can only wonder how we will tackle such growing instances of violence against women, because we can’t tackle the problem by yoga or preventing women from stepping outside the house.
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Ducard
A man is convicted in a false case of dowry every 3 minutes. What has the state done about it?
Ducard
Please provide concrete statistic over 20 minute claim.
Monistaf
One rape every 20 minutes is more than half a million rapes per year. It is YOUR numbers that DO NOT ADD up.
Reposting the comment from a previous related article..
I actually think the cuts are aligned with the empirical evidence for rape in India. Based on the National Bureau of Crime Records report for the year 2013, of the nearly 6.67 million violations of the IPC, approximately 34000 were rapes. This puts it at 0.5% of the total crime. I am as much against rape as everyone else, but unlike most feminists out there, I also feel that there is a lot of other crime where victims deserve equal sympathy and compassion. Even just recognizing rape against men and boys would be a good start. Legally, men and boys cannot be raped in India, because IPC section 375 defines rapes in terms of male perpetrators and female victims. In the spirit of gender equality (Dictionary definition) I would challenge the feminists in India to recognize that rape is a crime that can affect both genders and fight for victim rights regardless of gender instead of trying to bolster their own victim complex by building more crises centers exclusively for female victims. As if, no one else or no other crime matters!!
swati srivastava
The statics are based on only crimes which are reported there are many male and female who doesn’t file report due to shame and social stigma and because there is no law or police doesn’t want extra work. There are other crimes which may be as heinous as rape but the problem is social stigma and izzat is only associated with rape. People think rape as sex not as a crime. Rape is associated with men’s respect not a crime against human. How a man can report FIR when police(men) laugh at him. Police should given training on how to handle these cases. In many cases its the police which fail people whether its Nithari case, or Arushi murder case or Nagpur serial rapist case or Rohtak sisters case or 26/11 case in many cases it is the police who fail to act quickly and after the storm all left is damage control.