Blame it on women!

Nasrin Sultana Delhi

On the frozen winter night of January 17, 2007, at around midnight, six abusive men claiming to be CID officials, broke open the door, barged into a girl’s madrassa at Karhenda in Allahabad, picked up two young girls at gun-point and reportedly gangraped them, in a field one kilometre away. Eye witnesses said they were left to the school at around 2 am, “both of them, with torn clothes, in total shock, literally half-dead”.  Later, the station officer of Kareli police station in Allahabad, refused to lodge a FIR complaint and conduct a medical examination of the victims. As of now, the brutal act has rocked the state of UP yet again, now widely dubbed as being effectively controlled by miscellaneous criminals, gangsters, murderers, rapists and serial killers of all varieties.  Anarchy almost stalks the land.

On December 18, 2006, 16-year-old Tapashi Mallick was raped and burnt within the boundary of the land acquired for the controversial Tata Motors' small car unit at Singur. She was in the forefront of the struggle against the project. A CBI inquiry has been instituted following Mamata Banerjee’s hunger strike. But, as yet, her murder remains a mystery, while the Tatas perform holy puja at the controversial site.

These are not random cases. Every girl in the entrenched Indian system of patriarchy is a victim of the ‘male panoptic gaze’ in some form or other. The Manu Sharmas and Santosh Singhs are all among us. They can be anybody — fathers, brothers, uncles, landlords, neighbours, even boyfriends.

For women in India, the struggle for security begins from the womb. Witness the high rate of female foeticide. According to a UNICEF report, because of selective abortion, about 40 to 50 million girls and women are missing from the Indian population since 1901. (In August, 2006, in Patran, Patiala, 50 female foetuses were found in a 10-metre well located behind a private clinic.) India’s female ratio between 0-6 years age group has fallen to 896 females per 1,000 males, the lowest ever in a decade for the world’s second most populous nation. Of the 12 million girls born in India, one million are killed in the womb.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 2005, confirms that Delhi is the most unsafe metropolis for women. Delhi is widely branded as the ‘rape and crime capital’ of the nation. College campuses, classrooms, malls, cinema halls, buses, trains and subways — women, girls and children are vulnerable everywhere. Even three-year-olds are at risk. 

In 2005, Delhi had the highest crime rate against women, 27.6 per cent per lakh population, which is twice the national average of 14.2 per cent. A whopping one-third of rape cases take place in Delhi alone — 562 out of a total of 1,693 cases in India.

As for kidnapping and abductions of women, 900 out of a total of 2,409 cases, about 37.4 per cent, occurred in the capital in 2005. Delhi accounted for 94 dowry deaths of the 492 cases in India. In the same year, Delhi, with 197 cases, was second to Kanpur (227 cases) in sexual harassment cases. In terms of kidnapping and abduction of children below 15, Delhi reported the highest figure in the country, 18.9 per cent in 2005. While the all-India average of Indian Penal Code crimes is 165.3, Delhi recorded a stunningly high figure of 356.1 in 2005.