SHOWED NO MERCY, GOT NO MERCY

16/12 GANG RAPE Convicts break down in courtroom, their lawyer accuses judge of acting under political pressure; victim’s parents, brother say justice has finally been done

Nine months after that cold December night when a 23-year-old woman was raped on a moving bus, a crime so heinous it cut short a promising young life and riveted an entire nation, a fast-track court handed the death penalty to the four men convicted of the act.

“The convicts shall be hanged by the neck till they are dead,” additional sessions judge Yogesh Khanna said, bringing the sevenmonth-longtrial toa close. The men were pronounced guilty on Tuesday.

Gym instructor Vinay Sharma (20), fruit seller Pawan Gupta (19) and bus cleaner Akshay Thakur (28) howled in anguish while fellow convict Mukesh Singh (26) stood stunned with folded hands.

An equally dramatic response came from defence counsel AP Singh, who yelled at the judge: “You have not upheld the truth but lies. This decision has been taken under political pressure and for vote bank politics.”

On the other side of the courtroom, the teary-eyed parents of the victim hugged each other. “We got justice. We are happy. We were waiting with bated breath and now we are relieved,” they said.

Their son said it had been hard to watch the accused “laughing” during the trial. “This is true justice for my sister,” he said outside the court.

“It was death they deserved and death they got,” the Guardian quoted the father of the victim’s male friend, who was badly injured in the December 16 attack, as saying.

“At a time when gruesome crimes against women have become rampant, courts can’t turn a blind eye to the need to send a strong message to the perpetrators. This crime has shaken the collective conscience of society,” Khanna said — breaking the nib of his pen as he signed off on the order, an old tradition associated with death sentences. Pointing out that the “ghastly act” fit into the rarest-of-rare category, the judge said, “This extreme mental perversion isn’t worthy of condonation.”

Outside his court, the crowds erupted in celebration. The sentence needs to be confirmed by the Delhi high court. The defence said it would appeal against the verdict. Earlier on August 31, another accused was convicted and sent to a reform home as he was a minor at the time of the crime. The sixth accused, Ram Singh, was found hanging in his Tihar jail cell on March 11.

So what changes now? Now that four convicts in the Delhi gang rape case have been sentenced to death will your daughter be able to take a bus from a late evening film show without worrying about making it safely home? Can I make eye contact with strange men on the street without a returning leer? Will missing street lights on deserted roads miraculously light up?

A stiff sentence, no matter how welldeserved, is the easiest path to retribution and collective chest thumping. The public rage against a senseless, brutal crime on the night of December 16 is drawing to its logical end. The road has been bumpy, but not uneventful: Changed laws, greater media focus and the subject of violence against women dragged out of the shadows into mainstream discourse.

That’s the good news. But India’s 9/11 rape report, the day that prosecution and defence lawyers were arguing for and against the death sentence, remains grim. News of another gang rape in Bandra, Mumbai filters out. In Chandigarh, a threeyear-old remains in critical condition after being gang-raped. A 28-year-old married woman in Murshidabad, West Bengal, is gang-raped in front of her children. And just 100 km away from Bhubaneswar, a 17-year-old is abducted and kept captive for three days while she is raped by multiple men.

News agencies report that in the first eight months of this year, 1,121 rape cases have been registered in Delhi alone, more than twice the cases registered for the same period the previous year. Other figures are as worrying. A United Nations report finds that one in four men surveyed in Asia (India was excluded from the study) admitted to having raped at least once, while one in 10 said they had raped a woman who wasn’t their partner.

Rape is the most obvious manifesta- tion of violence against women but it is by no means the only one. Sex selective abortion, malnutrition and systemic discrimination against the girl child, domestic violence, stalking, sexual harassment, the list is long.

One way to fight violence against women is through tougher laws and better policing. But how do you begin to confront the violence in homes where sons are brought up with a sense of entitlement and daughters with the idea that they are subservient? A 2012 Unicef (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund) report finds that 57% boys and 53% girls believed it was ok for a man to beat his wife. If close to 94% rapes are committed by men known to women, then we need to ask who amongst us are these fathers and brothers and uncles. The path-breaking Justice JS Verma report recommended making marital rape an offence but found few takers among our legislators or indeed the public at large.

Around the world women face a tough, uphill battle. Globally, finds the World Health Organizaton (WHO), one in three women will face some sort of sexual or physical violence in her lifetime. This, says WHO, is a ‘global health problem of epidemic proportions’.

The United States reports 27.6 rapes per 100,000 people. India seems better off with only 1.8 but this is reflective of a weaker reporting system where notions of honour and shame prevent rape survivors from speaking up. When they do, trials drag on for years — there are over 23,000 cases of rape pending before the various high courts — and conviction rates are abysmal.

So what now? Now that judgment has been delivered do we lapse back into our usual somnolence?

If there’s one thing to learn from the lessons of the past few months it is this: there is no going back. At the heart of the issue is not rape or the merits of the death sentence or the need to relook the Juvenile Justice Act. At the heart is patriarchy and how we treat our women. This conversation must continue, in drawing rooms, in chat rooms, on the street. We owe it to the 23-year-old trying to get back home one winter night. We owe it to every woman. We owe it to ourselves.