A rape has taken place every 25 minutes in India over the past 13 years, a new study has found.
The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) said 272,844 rape cases had been registered across the country between 2001 and 2013, making it a daily average of 57 such instances.
The federal capital New Delhi alone accounted for 8,060 rapes during this period, registering a 329 per cent increase from 2001 to 2013.
The CHRI report, published at the weekend, also disclosed that 5,101 people were convicted of rape in 2013, an increase of just 13 per cent over the previous year. The overall rate of convictions for rape and sexual molestation remained abysmally low, the analysis stated.
Women’s rights activists say that only 10 per cent of rape and other sexual harassment cases in India are reported, as there is intense social pressure in a largely conservative milieu against families going public over the crime. Even when women do report rapes or molestation, police, especially in rural areas, frequently refuse to file charges.
Indian newspapers regularly report instances of rape victims being molested by the police to whom they turn to for protection. Many such victims are low caste or Dalit women.
And although policemen are being charged with rape, they are let off by India’s inept and corrupt legal system.
A series of horrific rapes recently rocked India, highlighting the pathetic state of women’s safety in the country and also resulting in tougher laws against rape and sexual harassment. This was triggered by nationwide outrage over the gang rape and murder of a medical student (23) on a bus in Delhi in December 2012.
For weeks, demonstrators demanding stricter laws to protect women clashed with police forcing the authorities to usher in stricter legislation.
This does not seem to have deterred rapists. In yet another shocking incident in May, two teenage Dalit cousin sisters were raped in their village in northern Uttar Pradesh state and then hanged. The girls, aged 14 and 15, were waylaid and violated by five men as they ventured into nearby fields to relieve themselves, as they had no toilets at home.
Earlier in the year India’s supreme court ordered an investigation into the gang-rape of a tribal woman (20) in eastern Bengal state, allegedly at the behest of her village council as “punishment” for falling in love with a Muslim boy. The woman, who was admitted to hospital in a serious condition, later told the police that she was raped the entire night on the directions of her village elders for wanting to marry a man from a different community and religion.
