On Monday, all of India woke up to the horrifying story of the girl who was brutally gang raped in Delhi. The girl was raped by six people, tortured and beaten bloody in a bus for almost an hour and dumped naked on the sidewalk along with her boyfriend who was also beaten with iron rods and thrown out naked. Their only crime? Being out late at night with each other. All they ever wanted to do was catch a movie and go home.
As someone who has been to the same multiplex where the two watched a movie, and commuted down the same road where they suffered their ordeal, the story hits hard.
Delhi has been reeling under rampant incidents of rapes, gang rapes and mindless violence for quite some time now. The victims’ lives are destroyed not only by those who abused them but by society as a whole who blames them for ‘inviting the rape’. Worse is the face that most of the rapists are let off the hook by an inefficient and corrupt judicial system, or are simply never caught.
No girl or woman is safe in Delhi today. Children, teenagers, college students, married women, mothers, grandmothers, all of them have been targeted indiscriminately. Nobody can step out of their house on nightfall in Delhi without having to fear for their lives and virtue.
Drastic and immediate action is needed to drive fear through the hearts of those who abuse. New, more draconian laws need to be implemented that would completely destroy those who rape and abuse. Castration should be carried out on those who commit sexual abuse at a minimum. Apart from brutal punishments, the society needs to wake up and change its ways. Far too long the hypocritical Indian society has been shooting itself in the foot. We should unite against such evil, and be compassionate and kind to those who suffer instead of excommunicating them and calling them sluts. Then, and only then shall we see a better day dawn for the women of Delhi.
Thoughts and prayers are ever with the poor girl in the hospital. Nobody can give her back what she lost, but all we can hope for is that those who did this to her are apprehended and given the harshest possible sentences.
More about the incident: http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/delhi-gangrape-victim-very-critical-but-stable/article4218677.ece
Morbid Lustrum 