FURY AS INDIAN AUTHORITIES ARE ACCUSED OF PROTECTING RAPISTS
▶ Protests over perceived lack of justice for murder of 8-year-old girl
Two cases of child rape have led to the biggest displays of anger over sexual violence in India since the 2012 gang rape and murder of a woman in Delhi.
The protests over the past week have been against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, which is accused of protecting the rapists from justice, and Hindu nationalist groups allied to it.
Details of the rapes emerged last week. In Kashmir in January, a Muslim girl, 8, was raped and murdered in a village temple over three days.
Eight Hindu men, including a former bureaucrat and four police officers, have been charged with crimes ranging from rape and murder to complicity in covering up the incident.
Last Monday, as police tried to file charges against the men in Kathua town, lawyers shouted Hindu nationalist slogans and tried to block investigators from entering the courthouse.
BJP ministers in Jammu and Kashmir state’s coalition government attended rallies in support of the accused, which were organised by the Hindu Ekta Manch, a nationalist group.
And Kuldeep Singh Sengar, a BJP politician in the state of Uttar Pradesh, was arrested on Friday by federal investigators after being accused of raping a girl, 16, last year.
The state’s BJP government had transferred the case to the federal Central Bureau of Investigation under public pressure last week after local police for months dawdled over the investigation.
The politician’s brother, Atul Singh Sengar, was arrested earlier in the week for assaulting the girl’s father on April 8. He died in hospital last Monday.
The reluctance to punish these crimes was compounded by Mr Modi’s silence despite the growing public outrage.
Mr Modi finally addressed the issue on Friday night, saying that “no culprit will be spared”.
“Our daughters will definitely get justice,” he said.
The two BJP ministers in Kashmir who attended the rally in support of the accused rapists were forced to resign.
The rape cases have shaken India in a way that has not been seen since the December 2012 gang rape, and they have highlighted how little has changed today despite the passing of anti-rape laws.
Between 2012 and 2016 – the last year for which government data is available — the number of rapes registered annually rose from 25,000 to 40,000. About 19,000 of the 40,000 rapes in 2016 were of children.
The statistics do not necessarily reveal an increase in the incidence of rape, said Jayshree Bajoria, author of a Human Rights Watch report last November on sexual violence in India. Rather, the numbers may equally indicate an increase in women reporting rapes, she said.
In an investigation of 21 rape or sexual assault cases last year, Ms Bajoria found that policemen often resisted attempts by women to file complaints.
In cases where the rapists were politically powerful, or came from a dominant community, officers often encouraged the women to “compromise” or move on.
To date, not a single police official has been charged for failing to register a rape complaint.
“We tend to think that after these new laws, we’ve made progress – and we have, on paper,” Ms Bajoria said.
“But when it comes to ensuring that women get the kind of justice they deserve, there are still serious gaps.”