Reported rapes per year 24,206 (2012) – 37000(2014), and as of 2016, 37,900, one women is raped every 15 minutes, there are 92 women raped in India every day,4 in Delhi. One of the four out of the 24,206 cases was the known Nirbhaya, 90% of the rapes go unreported, so do the math as the figures here are only applicable to the reported cases.
98% of the times the victim is raped by a family member or a known member but it is not reported because well “family is family”. This happens in lower class families, sometimes the illegal immigrants whose records do not exist in country. How can one’s rape be reported if there is record of her existence. Illiteracy and poverty could be blamed but then cases like the one portrayed by Alia Bhatt in Highway also exists, in well known affluent families who have no reason to not report such cases but the family pride and status takes over and yet on the other hand we say ‘Daughters are the pride of our family. Ironic. The state with the highest literacy rate has reported 910 rapes in 6 months so that kicks the whole illiteracy norm out of context.
One of the other reasons that I read was skewed sex ratio but female infoeticide happened naturally on its own right ? no one can be blamed for the skewed sex ratio. Obviously.
Our mythological books have seen instances of rapes in them, and I am saying it glorified it but to some who followed these books it justified it.
And then there are reasons like immodest clothing donned by girls/women, yet if you collect the newspaper articles for a week you would have collected around 30 rape articles (in some corner of the 8th page, because a popstar coming to India needs to be on the headlines) of women dressed in salwar, dress, saree, burkha being fallen prey to this crime, of various ages respectively and all of them ‘were not asking for it’. No one does.
One of these cases which got national and international publicity was the infamous Nirbhaya case which finally got justice today and the right justice but what about the other lakhs of Nirbhayas, will they have to wait for 5 years for their justice too or will it even reach the court because half the time the victim is so traumatized, during the crime and after the crime, during the process ( in the police station, in the court, degrading medical examinations, attitude of the police officers) that she doesn’t have the will to take it forward. The victim is Indian cannot get justice if the criminal pulls some strings here and there. We as a country need a stronger and faster governance and abrupt need to stop justifying rape as anyone but the victim’s fault.