Rape victims await the long road to justice, with India still turning a deaf ear to the far-off cries of sexual assault survivors.
Table of Contents
The Background
On December 26, 2022, a heinous crime was reported from Sector 39, Gurgaon. A 26-year-old girl hailing from Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, was gang-raped while she was staying in Chandigarh. The girl had been kidnapped and had been raped continuously for four consecutive days by the men. The girl stated that she had come down to Mohali from her hometown as she was looking for a job.
During her quest to find a job, she stayed with one of her friends for over a month. She had befriended the accused, Jasvinder Singh alias Sunny, during this time. They even continued to talk on the phone regularly. On the pretense of helping her, he took her for a car ride.
After this, he took her to his friend, Ravinder Pal Singh’s house in Sector 39, where he spiked her food and drugged her, after which she lost consciousness. Thereafter, he and his friend raped her for four days. It was even reported that she was helplessly tied up during those gruesome days at the house in Sector 39. After she somehow, managed to escape, she immediately reported the crime to the police, narrating her ordeal.
The chain of arrests
The police had gone down to the location and arrested one of the accused. After that on December 30, 2022, the main accused was caught by the police.
Filing of Chargesheet
After nearly two months, after the crime, the police filed the chargesheet. The accused are facing seven sections of the Indian Penal Code, including Section 376(d) for Gangrape.
The ordeal of Rape victims
After one of the most spine-chilling Nirbhaya Rape cases, wherein a 23-year-old girl was raped in a moving bus, India tried to bring about a new change by pushing the new anti-rape law, yet sexual violence against women continues to make headlines. Every day, 100 cases of rape are reported, but out of these, only one in four leads to the conviction of the accused.
After the Nirbhaya case, the establishment of fast-track courts for sexual assault cases was one of the major reforms implemented. Many rape survivors report that there is a lack of support from all walks of government. They have continuously reported how the police themselves subject them to inconsiderate interrogation, and even after that, there is always a delay in registering the rape case itself.
Victims have reported that police often after registering the complaint, refuse to add certain charges to the complaint, which in turn reduces the seriousness of the complaint. Victim blaming has been another problem that rape survivors are facing. If it is anyhow known, that, the victim was known to the accused, then the authorities try to find a way to pin the blame on the victim.
Women who are rape victims are prodded and poked like pieces of meat when it comes to providing them with medical care. There are often times when victims are denied. Even if medical officers do the medical examination, they subject the victims to mental distress by mentioning the size of a woman’s vaginal opening, old tears to the hymen, and past obstetric history in documents, even though this practice is prohibited by law. Time and again, the judiciary has to step in and always pass orders to ensure that those victims who manage to open the doors of justice are given the necessary compensation and funding.
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