Rape
and rapists have been in the headlines thrice in the last one week, and here’s
why. Ram Singh, one of the main accused in the Damini rape case, (allegedly) hung himself in Tihar Jail, despite having been put on suicide watch. Suicide
watch? More like watch him commit suicide. A couple from Switzerland was
assaulted in Madhya Pradesh and the woman beaten and raped in front of the man
by a gang of 6 farmers. Finally, the judge announced that those charged with
the Steubenville rape were guilty. A rapist dead, yet another rape and two rapists
condemned. It’s been a solid week.
A
Rapist Dead is a Rapist Less
Ram
Singh used his clothes and a rod in his jail to hang himself from the ceiling.
Apparently, his three inmates were present in the cell while this happened and
a guard had been posted, yet nobody was aware of what transpired.
"There is some foulplay. He cannot commit
suicide. He is not such a person that he can commit suicide. He was very happy
with the way the trial was going on," advocate VK Anand, who represents
Singh, alleged.
Well,
VK Anand, we’re glad your client was a happy guy but honestly the system is
burdened enough without having the added load of trying to track down the
person who supposedly killed your client. I understand that because of
his death, Damini has been denied complete justice because he clearly got the
easy way out while she had struggled for her life, but the point remains that
our justice system is complicated and isn't the most efficient, and it is
highly possible that it would have sentenced Ram Singh to death, but he would
have died on death row. Either way, he would have died, which isn’t such a bad
thing.
The Home Minister said it
it would have been better if the law of the country had punished him. "He
has done one more crime as committing suicide is also a crime”
Honestly what is the point
of comments like these- we’re clearly not even capable of trying people for
rape – robbing someone else of their identity,
but apparently his committing suicide is to be frowned upon as well. What would
the punishment be for attempted suicide? The
death penalty?
While
we’re on ridiculing things that people have said, I’ve discovered my new
favorite man! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Manohar Lal Sharma.
 |
| "Yes, I do have my brains in my ass", he was overheard saying |
Speaking to The Independent, Manohar said: “I have
not seen a single incident or example of rape with a respected lady. Even an
underworld don would not like to touch a girl with respect.”
Blaming the victim's friend, “This all happened
because of the lust of the boy. This is the boy who should be hanged. He's
responsible for everything. He should be punished.”
I’m
going to leave that there because nothing that I can say about his statements has not been pointed out before. ML Sharma is Mukesh Singh’s lawyer. I hope that Mukesh joins his bumchum brother up there, soon. He claims his inmates have
urinated in his defendant’s mouth, and that he’s been brutally tortured by the
Indian police. My heart bleeds.
On
a side-note, I don’t condone torture by policemen. However, I couldn’t be less
bothered about callous rapists being given a taste of their own medicine.
Indian
Tourism & Other Tales
On
Friday, a Swiss tourist couple was beaten, and the woman was raped. A gang of
farmers in Madhya Pradesh robbed the couple, while they had been on a biking
tour of the area. The police have arrested 5-6 men in relation to the crime,
although there are conflicting reports. The reason this has caught the media’s
attention is because of the woman’s nationality, and the entire world watches
now more than ever as Indian officials attempt to navigate this situation and
attempt to prevent it from blowing up into a diplomatic fiasco. Less known is
the fact that on the same day this Swiss woman was raped, another woman was
raped aboard a moving bus in Madhya Pradesh’s capital (sounds familiar?) but
this time it was in broad daylight.
The
Swiss government have demanded a swift probe into what took place, and local
authorities are under pressure to respond more quickly to this than other
low-profile cases that take place on a day-to-day basis. That isn’t the issue.
The issue is that despite candlelight marches and protests and waves of uproar
calling for reform (not to mention the very damning and forceful Facebook
shares of photos of “SHARE THIS FOR JUSTICE FOR WOMAN” with the underlying tone
being “IF U DON’T SHARE U DON’T HV HEART”) not much has changed. Some officials
have obviously blamed the couple for lodging in an area where the women:men
ratio is off (85:100 apparently) and that they should have known better.
Trying
the rapists is still the easy part. Changing this deeply entrenched, scarily
backward thinking is the bigger challenge.
Rape Isn’t a Cultural Thing
- American media on the India gang rape: Omg those barbarians are out of control! Look at us, we're so ahead of the times!
- American media on the Steubenville rape: Omg look at the lives we're ruining by convicting these 16 year old rapists!
As
much as I slander the lack of respect we seem to have for women in India, the
Steubenville rape case that closed a couple of hours ago was a reminder that
rape isn’t India, or even Asia- specific. It happens everywhere.
Two
members of a high-school football team were found guilty of raping a 16-year
old girl, and interestingly enough, text messages, videos and the much-loved
Instagram contributed as evidence to prosecuting the two boys. We’ve all heard
the familiar story before- high school heroes take advantage of a situation as
if normal rules don’t apply to them. The problem is that often a lot of people
forget that normal rules do apply to them- the community has been accused of
sheltering these two boys and covering up what actually happened.
The
thing is, if there’s an Instagram photo of the two boys holding the unconscious
girl by her hands and legs and a 12 minute video from the night of the assault
of a classmate mocking the victim and joking about sexual assault, it leaves
little room for imagination. Furthermore, there are text messages from the
rapists to other friends talking about what happened.
The
debate was between whether the girl was too drunk to have been a willing
participant, and whether the girl, despite being drunk, knew what she was
doing. The girl had testified in court claiming she didn’t remember a thing but
that there was no way she agreed to do anything.
The
irony here is that because we are dealing with a first-world superpower, we
expect the response to be slightly more civilized, right? Wrong. The girl was
drunk, it was obviously her fault. She was wearing provocative clothes, how
could she not have been raped? Alcohol is not a woman’s best friend. These are
the basic gists of the responses to the case. When Indians or other Asians
bring forward such thoughts, it is backward and orthodox. When Americans do the
same, everybody scoffs and dismisses them as a one-off thing. It’s a good thing
the two boys were caught, tried and persecuted. Whether they cried when the
verdict was announced is irrelevant. If you behave like an animal, you will be
treated like one, and this is something that applies to everyone.
Being
drunk is not illegal. Wearing skirts is not illegal. Rape most definitely is.
Apparently this is as difficult a concept to grasp in the West as it is in the
East.
-Lassie
