‘Where are we heading as a society?’
KATHUA’S SHADOW President Kovind and J&K CM Mehbooba condemn spate of rapes of minors across India
KAKRYAL (REASI): President Ram Nath Kovind on Wednesday condemned the gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)’s Kathua in unequivocal terms, and urged every individual to do his or her bit to ensure that children are safe and secure.
“I think the most beautiful thing in this world is the smile of an innocent child and a society’s biggest success lies in the safety of its children. Every child has to be protected and feel secured. It is the first and foremost responsibility of any society,” Kovind said at the sixth convocation of the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University in Katra.
“However, in our country our children today are falling prey to brutal crimes and recently in this state, an innocent girl child also fell prey to a brutal crime and ghastly murder, which is beyond imagination and that is why I put forth before you the indispensability of human values,” he said.
According to a recent charge sheet filed by the crime branch of J&K police, the child from the nomadic Bakarwal family was kidnapped on January 10, held captive in a village temple, drugged and raped before being murdered. Her body was discovered on January 17. The police have charged eight people in the case, linking it to a conspiracy to scare the Bakarwal community into leaving the village.
The brutality of the crime has sparked protests in J&K and elsewhere in India and has exposed cracks in the state’s ruling coalition between the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), two of whose ministers had to quit the government after taking part in a rally organised in support of the eight accused. There has been a raft of rapemurders of children elsewhere in the country as well.
Student protests and demonstrations continued across Kashmir on Wednesday against the Kathua rape-murder. Protests were reported from Anantnag, Awantipora, Srinagar, Baramulla and Ganderbal, among other areas, and in some places, turned into clashes with security forces.
“Even after 70 years of independence such an incident occurring in any part of the country is shameful. We need to think what where we are heading as a society,” Kovind said in his speech.
“What kind of society we are building? What are we going to give to our coming generations? Are we building a society where our mothers, sisters and daughters feel free, safe, secure and equal as per the constitution? It becomes our responsibility to ensure such an incident does not happen ...” he added.
Chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, who was present at the same event, said she was shocked that the Kathua incident took place in a land where people worship young girls as a reincarnation of the goddess Durga.
“When we talk of a value system, I think it is under a real crisis. Recent happenings against weaker and underprivileged sections, especially the females, are alarming and have shaken us as a society,” she said.
This place in the Trikuta Hills, known to be the abode of the goddess Vaishno Devi, is perhaps the best testimony of the value system this society has when it comes to treating women and girls, she said. “The entire set of rituals in this part of the state revolves around Kanya Pujan because here we literally worship the girls as a reincarnation of goddess Durga. How could anybody commit such a heinous act against one such living form of Mata in her own land? There is something seriously wrong in the value systems,” she said.