FRONTLINE
1  COVER STORY The lesser half
 Activists of "Citizens Collective Against Sexual Assault" staging a protest against the police inaction in cases of assault on women in the National Capital Region, at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on May 5.
The shocking incident of the beating and molestation of a young woman by a mob in Guwahati in Assam on July 9 has exposed the ugly underbelly of modern, globalised India, where women face violence, covertly and overtly, at home and outside. The incident has also exposed the lackadaisical manner in which these crimes are treated by the authorities and the general public, and subjected to all kinds of interpretations, which eventually deflects attention from the real issues behind the violent manifestation of and escalation in such crimes.
It was not long ago, in June, that Rumi Nath, a young woman legislator of the ruling Congress in Assam, was beaten up by a mob just because she had dared to marry for the second time. In another case, a woman Member of Parliament from Dahod in Gujarat was beaten up by the police.
The Guwahati incident attracted significant public attention, widely telecast as it was on the days following it and later repeatedly shown on leading television channels and social networking sites as a subject matter of discussion. How much of this was voyeuristic is anybody’s guess. The focus shifted from the victim and the overall situation of rising crimes against women to the role of the media, the electronic media in particular, and the clumsy handling of the case by the National Commission for Women (NCW), a statutory body set up nearly two decades ago to strengthen the legal apparatus to protect women.
The NCW, which has assumed the role of a proactive body over the last one decade in terms of conducting several fact-finding and inquiry committees into random incidents of violence against women, went into mission mode after the Guwahati incident. It constituted a fact-finding team comprising members of the Commission, including a former Youth Congress leader, Alka Lamba, who had little experience of dealing with such incidents. What followed was outrageous. The victim’s identity was given out during a press conference.
Meanwhile, even as several of the accused continued to remain at large, the television channel that had aired the pictures of the molesters and captured the acts of molestation live was at the receiving end, accused of having orchestrated the entire episode and even instigated the mob to molest the young woman. The focus continued to shift, and views on the ethics of media coverage were as diverse as they could get. However, there was no denying that had the faces of the molesters not been captured on camera, the State police would not have been able to apprehend 12 of them in a short time. The continuous and repeated telecasting of the molestation by leading channels was of no concern to anyone.
Following the faux pas by the inquiry panel member and the outrage over it, the NCW distanced itself from the statement and the person. But the organisation ran into more controversy when the Chairperson was criticised for suggesting that women should dress carefully. She, however, denied making that statement. Some commentators even went to the extent of suggesting that the NCW should be disbanded. The views of women’s organisations that had fought hard to get the NCW constituted and put many women-specific laws in place and had lobbied hard for strengthening the existing laws just did not matter.
Interestingly, after the previous Chairperson demitted office, the NCW had been headless for nearly five months. And the acting Chairperson, after taking over charge, issued a statement that baffled all: “I would like to educate the women to adopt the collective approach in the right direction and awareness to join the current stream of the nation.”
The incumbent Chairperson, Mamta Sharma, a former legislator from Rajasthan, who will complete one year in office in August, if she did indeed make moralising statements, has not been alone in making such remarks. The Commission, while probing the murder of Sister Valsa John in November last year in Pakkur district, Jharkhand, allegedly by the mining mafia, encountered a senior police officer who said, in connection with the rape of a tribal woman who was an associate of the nun and perhaps a witness to the murder, that police frequently did not register first information reports (FIRs) in such cases. Worse, he said that rape was common among tribal people. The Commission took an adverse view of the officer’s comments and recommended that its observation be entered in his confidential service reports.
Khap diktats
Examples of leading political representatives defending the undemocratic diktats of khaps and caste panchayats on the grounds of respecting popular sentiment and tradition are not uncommon. Recently, a highly educated Member of Parliament, Jayant Chaudhary of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), justified the decision of khap panchayats. Following reports of a caste panchayat in Asra village in Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh restricting the movement of young girls within the village and their use of mobile phones, the young MP told mediapersons that every family had a right to manage its own affairs and that there was nothing wrong in the decision of the panchayat. Baghpat happens to be the constituency of RLD chief and Union Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh.
Meanwhile, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram, who took a stern view of the diktat, was criticised by the All India Jat Arakshan Samiti, which has been actively demanding reservation for Jats in the backward classes category. A senior Minister in the State even commented that the decision of the panchayat did not warrant action as it did not clash with the laws of the land. In another case, in 2010, in the context of a demand to amend the Hindu Marriage Act to ban sah-gotra (same gotra) marriages, a young Congress MP from Haryana lauded the service rendered by khap panchayats.
Killing for honour
Although not documented in crime records as such, honour-related crimes have been on the rise in the past one and a half decades in the country. A draft of The Prevention of Crimes in the Name of Honour and Tradition Bill, 2010, has been pending with the NCW for two years. It was prepared by senior advocate and former Law Commission member Kirti Singh and adopted by the NCW. The Union government has been dragging its feet on several Bills, including a comprehensive draft Bill to prevent sexual assault. This was also prepared by Kirti Singh on behalf of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA). The Bill proposed several amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in order to widen the ambit and definition of rape. In May this year, Parliament passed the Protection of Children Against Sexual Offences Bill, raising the age of consent from 16 to 18, but many Bills, including the Women’s Reservation Bill, are in cold storage. A major problem is that even those Bills pertaining to women and children that are passed by Parliament do not somehow comprehensively address all the issues raised by women’s organisations.
 Mamta Sharma, Chairperson of the National Commission for Women, addressing the media in Guwahati on July 18 in connection with the public molestation of a young girl there.
The Protection of Women against Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill, 2010, is awaiting parliamentary passage even though the Supreme Court had issued guidelines on stopping sexual harassment at the workplace 15 years ago. The Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha last year and has remained there since. It had excluded domestic workers from its ambit and was referred to the Union Cabinet for amendments. Interestingly, a Parliamentary Standing Committee recommended the inclusion of male workers in the Bill, something which was not acceptable either to the Women and Child Ministry or to women’s groups. Such attempts to constantly trivialise legislation meant to protect women have only worsened the situation.
The latest figures of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), released in June, show that crimes against women have been rising steadily. The NCRB has since 1953 been keeping a record of all crimes committed in India, including those against women and children. The data reveal an increase in crimes filed under the IPC (rape, molestation, kidnapping and abduction, homicide for dowry or dowry deaths, mental and physical torture, sexual harassment, eve-teasing, importation of girls) and those filed under Special and Local Laws (those specific to women, such as the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956, the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986, and the Sati Prevention Act, 1987).
Crimes against women in India, filed under both the IPC and the SLL, went up by 7.1 per cent over 2010 and 23.4 per cent over 2007. Significantly, States with a high per capita income, and high education and literacy levels, reported high rates of crimes against women. According to NCRB data, there was a continuous increase in crimes against women between 2007 and 2011; the sharpest increase was between 2010 and 2011. West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh reported the highest rates of crimes committed against women as a percentage of the total crimes.
Not only the reported number of crimes but the incidence of crime against women also went up in 2011, with Tripura topping the list. The IPC component of crimes accounted for 95.8 per cent of the total crimes against women and the SLL component 4.2 per cent. There has been a steady increase in the rate of IPC crimes since 2007. Rape, one of the most grievous crimes against women, increased by 3.5 per cent between 2007 and 2008, and after a decline in 2008 increased by 3.6 per cent in 2010 over 2009. The increase was monumental in 2011 over 2010: 9.2 per cent. Madhya Pradesh, among the States, reported the highest number of rape cases, accounting for 14.1 per cent of the total number of cases. The crime rate was the highest in Mizoram, much higher than the national average.
The NCRB categorised rape cases as incest rape and other rape cases; marital rape remains an unrecognised category by lawmakers. Girls under 14 constituted 10.6 per cent of the victims, and 19 per cent were teenaged girls between 14 and 18 years. The bulk of the victims, 54.7 per cent, were women in the age group of 18-30 years. As many as 141 victims of rape were over 50 years of age. The offenders were known to the victims in 94 per cent of the cases.
Kidnapping and abduction
Kidnapping and abduction cases went up by 19.4 per cent, with Uttar Pradesh accounting for a large number of them. Dowry deaths, too, went up in 2011, and a good number of them were reported from Uttar Pradesh, followed by Bihar.
Torture cases, that is, cruelty by husband and his relatives, registered under Section 498A of the IPC, went up by 5 per cent; West Bengal reported the highest rate for such crimes. It is significant to note here that there has been an orchestrated campaign to make the section non-culpable and compoundable, on the pretext of its misuse. Women’s groups have been strongly opposed to any dilution of the section.
Incidents of molestation increased by 5.8 per cent over the previous year; Madhya Pradesh reported the highest incidence. In contrast, cases of sexual harassment decreased by 14 per cent though some 9,961 cases were reported. But, worryingly, cases of importation of girls went up by as much as 122 per cent. Here again, Madhya Pradesh accounted for the bulk of such cases, followed by Karnataka and Bihar. The three States together accounted for more than two-thirds of the total number of cases at the national level.
Among crimes under Special Laws, cases registered under the Dowry Prohibition Act increased phenomenally by 27.7 per cent. Andhra Pradesh topped the list of States with such crimes, followed by Karnataka. However, there was a palpable decline in the number of cases registered under the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act. Whether this symbolises acceptability in the way women are represented or whether it is a reflection of changing mores is not clear.
City facts
In megacities, that is, those with a population of more than 10 lakh, a total of 33,789 cases of crimes against women were reported in 2011, almost 10,000 cases more than in 2010. The rate of crime too was high in the 53 megacities. Delhi accounted for the largest number, followed by Bangalore, Hyderabad and Vijayawada in that order. Delhi topped in accounting for the largest number of crimes filed under the IPC, leading in rape, kidnapping and abduction and dowry deaths. Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Patna reported more cases filed under the SLL; Bangalore registered the largest number of cases under the Dowry Prohibition Act. Like last year, the majority of cases under the Indecent Representation of Women Act were reported from the two cities of Jaipur and Jodhpur in Rajasthan. The NCW had, as per its mandate, drafted amendments to the Act, seeking to expand its scope to include electronic and digital media.
In recent years, human trafficking and crimes under the IPC related to it had received much publicity, internationally as well as domestically. But NCRB figures show an overall decline since 2007 in the various kinds of human trafficking covered under IPC and SLL laws, that is, procuration of minor girls, importation of girls, buying of girls for prostitution and immoral trafficking, and crimes under the Child Marriage Restraint Act.
 A protest in Bangalore on June 20 against the alleged rape of an infant by her father, an official in the French Consulate.
The NCRB also classifies certain crimes as violent crimes, and rape is one of them. The percentage share of rape as a violent crime was 9.4 per cent of the total violent crimes. The data show that while there has been an overall increase in the share of violent crimes to the total crimes filed under the IPC, the crimes affecting women have decreased marginally. But this can hardly be a consolation.
Dowry-related deaths
Dowry, love affairs and sexual matters have been described as significant causes for murders. Odisha leads in dowry murders (26.4 per cent murders due to dowry were reported from here) and Karnataka reported 32.1 per cent of murders for reasons relating to witchcraft.
The overall incidence of dowry deaths went up by 25.8 per cent over 2001, with Uttar Pradesh reporting the highest number of incidents as in previous years. Bihar came second. The crime rate for dowry-related deaths was the highest in Bihar.
Overall, the share of women victims of murder constituted 26.7 per cent (9,377 of 35,123 murder victims) of the total number of murder victims in 2011. Kidnapping and abduction of women went up three times; marriage was one of the main causes cited for the crime. Whether kidnapping for marriage is for revenge or due to the shortage of girls is a matter for further research, but the connection between the skewed sex ratio and this phenomenon cannot be overruled.
The sex ratio, especially child sex ratio, continues to worsen because of the tardy implementation of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994, which has made sex-determination tests illegal. Of the total of 1,165 such cases filed across the country, conviction has been secured only in 102 cases. The rate of disposal of crimes against women by courts and the police therefore speaks volumes on why things are the way they are.
The NCRB data also demolish the myth of misuse of laws by women. Of the total cases investigated by the police, only in 11 per cent the charge of cruelty by husband and his relatives was found to be false.
The overall rate of conviction for all crimes was 41.1 per cent. The pendency of cases, filed under both the IPC and the SLL, for trials was found higher in the north-eastern States, including Assam. The disposal by courts of SLL cases under the Dowry Prohibition Act was 19.5 per cent, with a pendency of 80.5 per cent. The disposal of IPC cases such as rape was only 16.4 per cent, dowry death cases 17.1 per cent, molestation 15.9 per cent, sexual harassment 17.4 per cent, and cruelty by husband and his relatives 12.3 per cent.
Of equal concern is the pathological increase in the number of child rapes in the country. A total of 7,112 cases of child rape were reported in 2011; the figure was 5,484 in 2010. That the rise is in thousands needs to be taken serious note of by policymakers. Among the States, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra accounted for 44.5 per cent of the child rape cases.
The overall incidence of crimes against children went up by 24 per cent over 2010, and the conviction rate for crimes committed against children remained at 30 per cent. The various inquiries initiated from time to time by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, a statutory body set up in 2005, have pointed out the shocking nature of the crimes against children, including crimes in shelter homes. The revelations in May this year of sexual exploitation, torture and forced labour of minor children, including girls, at a renowned shelter home in Rohtak, Haryana, which received Central and State grants and also awards, is a pointer to the deep-rooted malaise. The Protection of Children Against Sexual Offences Bill is, therefore, a welcome step, but if the root cause of destitution of children, that is abject poverty, is not addressed, the law by itself cannot guarantee protection.
In fact, a cursory look at the complaints received by the NCW itself since 1992 – coinciding with the beginning of economic reforms in the country – shows that there has been a steady increase from the 122 cases that year to 13,190 cases in 2008. It is of no use to have women as heads of state or government if they adopt and express the dominant values of a patriarchal society.
Among women, Dalit and tribal women are more vulnerable today. Knee-jerk reactions in the shape of not-too-well-thought-out laws cannot be the answer; neither is doing away with institutions. The exponential increase in crimes against women and children needs administrative, legal, judicial and societal responses and it cannot be dissociated from the lopsided development policies being pursued today.
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2
Social bondage
 An All-caste (khap) maha panchayat in Kurukshetra, Haryana, in April 2010. The platforms available for decision-making within communities have a long history of denying women the right to participate in the process.
If the 20th century was marked by an epic struggle between forces pitching for a choice between freedom and bondage, with the anti-imperialist struggle forging ahead, the irony, almost a century later, appears to lie in the fact that the forces vying for the top spot, so to say, are forging ahead with a strategy where the only option for women seems to be one of living in freedom with bondage. The choice, if it can be called that, is between one kind of bondage and another. In countries such as India, where everyday forms of violence have become more or less socially acceptable and it is only the “incidents” of violence that attract our attention, hardly any choice can be exercised on the ground.
The societal reflection on violence then – be it that of the media or of officialdom – is effectively focussed on the response to it. By all counts, the recent incidents of violence as well as the responses to them – represented by the bizarre incident in Guwahati and the implicit force of impending social wrath as reflected in the diktats of self-styled panchayats, be they khaps or any other – give an indication of the seriousness of the situation.
The women’s movement in India is often charged with exaggerating the scale of violence prevailing in contemporary Indian society. The Central government and Parliament have been seized of this in the form of efforts to dilute even the limited laws brought in to deal with violence against women, since these are seen to be shaking the very foundations of society by weakening the family, so to say. However, even as women’s organisations are having to confront this challenge, millions of women are having to deal with the shaky foundations of the prevailing social institutions in their daily lives. This is reflected in the utter failure of those responsible for upholding the law, who are at best silent spectators to its violation and, at worst, complicit in the crime, be it in the form of connivance or in the form of silent acquiescence to the power of vested interests opposed to any assertion of the right to freedom and dignity.
Furthermore, bodies such as the National Commission for Women, whose very genesis lay in women’s struggle for their rights and dignity, are only too happy swinging between being spokespersons of the conservative reactionary combine in Indian society and, to be charitable to them, acting as the outposts of the powers that be, often their political bosses.
Before going any further, it may be useful to consider the following set of facts.
Crimes against women have continued to increase even while the rate (defined as the number of crimes per 1,00,000 population) of cognizable crimes has shown a decline. In “Crime in India 2009”, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) provided data to show that between 1953 and 2008, instances of kidnapping and abduction had registered a 475.2 per cent increase, while cases of murder saw a 234.3 per cent increase.
The NCRB started recording rape cases separately only in 1971, and this showed an increase of 763.2 per cent between 1971 and 2008 (“Crime in India”, NCRB Compendium, MHA, GOI, 2009, page 12). Crimes against women, it may be noted, started appearing under a separate head in “Crime in India”, the annual report published by the NCRB, only from 1995. Since the mid-1990s, official statistics have shown more than a 50 per cent increase in crimes against women under different heads.
Be that as it may, the question that we need to ask is what is it that lends such ferocity to the violence women face in society? What is more challenging is that the scale and intensity of the increase in violence cut across all institutions. It would be a mistake to see these statistics as emblematic of only social violence, devoid of the contextual frame of economic policy, which frames social relations.
The crime figures that we see are an indication and manifestation of the intensity of the social conflict, economic crisis and the increased vulnerability of social life in such conflict- and crisis-ridden times. To identify only individuals as responsible for this would be totally off the mark. For such a high level of acceptability of socially perpetrated violence is not and cannot be stemming from only individual acts of identities based on machismo or patriarchy.
The structures that allow for such violence and denial of individual rights and provide impunity to the perpetrators are deeply entrenched within the power structures of our society. These include the state and its instruments of governance, which provide the context for the framing of discourses of rights and morality in the public domain and the private domain of the family.
There is no doubt that underlying much of the crime and violence against women in India is a strong element of patriarchy, which denies women the right to take decisions about their own lives at different stages of life. The restrictions placed on the woman’s mobility are social, institutional and familial. The site of imposing the restrictions is, in the first place, the family, where patterns of socialisation instil fear, including the fear of violence if she does not abide by the social norms. The pressure for such compliance, seen as imparting a moral boundary, is equally on the individual concerned and on those entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring that she acquires and adheres to the prescribed social norms. Similar codes and norms do not exist and are not framed for boys or men. Ironically, women have to bear the responsibility for any violation of the social norms by their male counterparts.
Given this, she is seen as having invited the atrocity or injustice inflicted on her. It is this which invites hostile comments when an incident happens because the woman is seen to have provoked the incident. It is this which leads to restrictions being placed on her movements, sphere of activity and modes of functioning.
While traditionally, mobility of women and social norms have been determined by their social location in terms of their affiliation to caste and class groups, and there have been visible variations in terms of region and ethnicity, the force of social and economic changes has ushered in some changes. This has given rise to two sorts of responses. On the one hand, it has made women a part of the negotiation of a public patriarchy. In the sense that self-styled leaders of communities appear on the stage as representatives speaking to the world at large as well as to the women themselves with regard to what rights “their” women have or can have. Interestingly, these panchayats have traditionally been known to deny women the right to be present, leave alone represent themselves.
While the vehemence with which khaps in Haryana have made such assertions is visible to all, few among us know that even in the “matrilineal” Khasi society, the Khasi durbar traditionally does not allow women to be its members. Effectively, this means that the platforms available for decision-making within communities have a long history of denying women the right to participate in the process, leave alone the more formal political sphere and issues of women’s representation in decision-making bodies in the modern political system. This complicates the situation insofar as it would not do to go with the romanticised notions of tradition, cultural values or communities and people. It has to first be recognised that these are all loaded terms, highly gendered, and conceal long histories of social divisions and hierarchies as well as inequalities and exclusions.
Further, the invoking and carrying over of tradition is selective and mediated by the given power structures, which change with time to suit the prevailing perceptions.
The process of assertion and negotiation of rights is deeply gendered. Any assertion of long-standing authority by the khaps, for instance, of a history going back to the 6th century, has to be critically engaged with, not to speak of the need to contest any right that is asserted purely by virtue of such tall claims of historicity in a country that is known to have undergone massive upheavals in the sphere of social institutions during its colonial past. While these may and should be the subject of rigorous historical research, the issues before the women’s movement are more fundamental and urgent in view of their contemporary fury and the validation of them by claims made on the past.
Moral brigade
More disconcerting is the increase in assertion and articulation of the moral brigade, which couches itself in the language of rights and draws sustenance from religious sanction. Interestingly, as women activists never fail to point out, the religious divide collapses when it comes to imposing moral restrictions on women. The Hindu Right and the Islamic fundamentalists are in unison with regard to placing restrictions on women, denying the basis of equality and freedom in the social domain, in drawing upon conservative interpretations on the basis of the so-called tradition, which is constructed in homogeneous terms, and in invoking the social patterns of life. It is the ferocity of this opposition to social and democratic change and the attitude towards women enshrined in the common agenda of various fundamentalisms that the women’s movement has had to contend with in recent decades.
The women’s movement unfortunately does not have the luxury of allowing itself indulgence in academic nuance. Pressing upon it is the brutalisation of social life and the indignities heaped on women, cutting across class, caste, ethnicity and region, on a daily basis. Those responsible for the injustice include a range of male counterparts who share the very social world as well as others. The others here do not always represent the classic “other” of contemporary academic discourse but the very people charged with the responsibility of upholding and protecting the rights of citizens, including, of course, women. They are the police and other officials, who conveniently look the other way when violation happens, and more so, now.
Even more alarming is the response of the state and the ruling political elite to the challenge to the rights guaranteed in the Constitution. The poverty of the social philosophy of those who govern us stands out most sharply in their utter failure to respond to this challenge to the rule of law in modern democratic India. It is on social agendas that the bankruptcy of the ideological content of the political class stands out most sharply. While individually a number of political leaders are known to have violated the norms of dignity of women, that is only part of the problem.
The real issue is that they not only fail to ensure that the administration responds to the call of duty but actually give out clear signals by either remaining silent when the rights of women are challenged or flouted or openly speak out in support of those challenging the law. This, in fact, is vastly different from the anti-colonial period when the force of the anti-imperialist wave sought to combine in its sweep an anti-feudal content pushing its weight behind a democratisation of the social order. It is this commitment to democratic rights and change that is missing across a large part of the political spectrum.
Which brings us to the question as to what is it in contemporary India that allows for an agenda of modernisation lacking a social commitment to modernity no matter which way it is interpreted, to be espoused by the social elite and the political leadership, which seeks to take its own interest forward? The local panchayats, be they elected, caste- or village-based, are after all a step in the social ladder of aspiring leaders. Both stand for, at best, the status quo in terms of social change and democratisation, whether with regard to caste, class or gender or any of the indices of a more egalitarian system in contemporary society. The vehemence with which these voices from the community speak comes from the threat that democratic change holds out to both on the basis and symbols of their power. Further, a ruling political elite, whichever party label it may temporarily flaunt, can ill-afford to upset the power alignments and equations on the ground when it is jittery about its own stability.
If, as history assumed, capitalism represented a more regulatory regime and if, as the post-Cold War neoliberal era asserts, the world today is about expanding choices and freedom and autonomy, then are we to conclude that capitalism has failed? Or that the assumption that capitalism is always democratic in terms of its social content needs critical examination? Or that increasing denial of freedom, liberty and equality are the hallmarks of capitalism in the phase of globalisation? These are questions that cannot be answered in any one way, nor from a universalist standpoint.
As far as women and the women’s movement in India are concerned, the lumpen/crony capitalism that they are confronted with today ensures no rights without assertion and articulation from their multiple locations and myriad experiences of oppression and exploitation. In that struggle there can be no neutral ground, nor equidistance from politics and from ideological debate. More so when the social content that the prevailing political formations in India reflect and the agendas they espouse display a hollowness of rhetoric. The more fundamentalist the rhetoric is allowed to become in the political domain, the more there is scope for social sanction to increasing violence and denial of individuals’ right to freedom and dignity.
Indu Agnihotri is Director and Senior Fellow, Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi.
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3
Base instincts
 Activists of the Assam Mahila Samata Society and other social organisations at a rally to protest against the sexual assault on a girl in Guwahati on July 9.
Molestation & mediaBy Sushanta Talukdar in Guwahati
In an incident that put India to shame, on the night of July 9, a group of men pulled out a 20-year-old girl from an autorickshaw she was trying to get into to return home after coming out of a bar on the busy Guwahati-Shillong road close to the Dispur capital complex of Assam, molested her and even tried to strip her. The assault went on for about 45 minutes in full public view and was recorded by a cameraman of a television news channel even as the girl cried for help from passing vehicles and bystanders. Finally, a senior journalist, Mukul Kalita, and a police officer, who were passing by, shielded her from the molesters before a police team arrived from the Bhangagarh police station, just a kilometre away. The assailants apparently tried to stop the police from taking her away on the pretext that there were no women police, and some of them tried to grope her even after she had got inside the police vehicle. They made desperate attempts to pull her hair with which she had covered her face to prevent it from being captured on camera. Later, a fact-finding team of the National Commission for Women (NCW) found that the girl had sustained burn injuries on her body from cigarettes. The shocking video of the incident went viral on the Internet and sparked off a public outcry across the country. In Assam, thousands of people took to the streets demanding exemplary punishment for the culprits.
The Assam Police identified 17 persons who were found to be involved in the crime and arrested 12 of them on the basis of the video footage of the television news channel. Even 10 days after the incident, they were still on the lookout for the rest, including the key accused, Amarjyoti Kalita, who ironically plays the role of a policeman in a crime-buster serial on a local television channel. The NCW has recommended action against the onlookers as well and against those who were protecting the culprits. Guwahati Senior Superintendent of Police Apurba Jibon Barua was shunted out after the incident. The public outcry also prompted the State government to order a probe by Additional Chief Secretary Emily Das Chowdhary and Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi to put his signature on a long-pending file for the appointment of a Police Commissioner for Guwahati city.
Jyoti Neog, the reporter of News Live Gaurab who covered the incident, resigned following allegations levelled against him by Team Anna member and Right to Information (RTI) activist Akhil Gogoi that the molestation was instigated by the reporter. Neog has alleged that there is a conspiracy against him. The Chief Minister, who also holds the portfolio of Home, has ordered a probe by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) into the allegation levelled against the reporter.
Atanu Bhuyan, editor-in-chief of the news channel, quit a day after the Chief Minister, while admitting his lapses, commented that the journalist covering the incident had a responsibility to inform the police but he had not done so. Bhuyan said that the Chief Minister’s comment could influence the probe and that he was apprehensive that the probe would not be impartial.
He also said that he feared that there could have been pressure from the Chief Minister on the management of the news channel to oust him. Bhuyan was a member of the board of directors of the channel, headed by Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, who is the wife of Assam Health and Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. The Chief Minister refuted Bhuyan’s allegation and said that even if there was any pressure he should have faced it as it behoved a journalist.
Bhuyan defended Neog and maintained that it was because of the video footage that the police could arrest the molesters. However, the Chief Minister, while acknowledging that the video footage had helped in booking the accused, said the journalist also had a responsibility to inform the police. This has stirred a debate on the role of the media in similar situations. The NCW, meanwhile, removed a member of its fact-finding team, Alka Lamba, for revealing the identity of the victim while addressing the media in Guwahati. Another NCW team comprising Chairperson Mamta Sharma and member Nirmala Samant Prabhavalkar visited Guwahati on July 18 to make a set of recommendations to the State government. The recommendations include providing a government job, compensation and financial aid to the victim; setting up CCTVs and special police pickets with women police in front of all the 128 pubs in Guwahati up to 10-30 p.m; a 24-hour women’s helpline and women’s cell in every police station; and establishing a fast-track court to take up the case of assault and molestation. The Chief Minister promised to extend financial help of Rs.50,000 to the victim when she met him and expressed her desire to open a beauty parlour. He also promised to look into her housing problem, an official release stated.
Assault on MLA
The incident occurred just 10 days after Rumi Nath, a ruling Congress legislator from Barkhola Assembly constituency in the Barak valley and her second husband, Abu Sahid Zakir Hussain, were beaten up by a mob that barged into their hotel room in Karimganj town. They hid in the toilet in order to escape the attack. However, the attackers dragged them out and assaulted them before the police came and rescued them. Video footage telecast on news channels showed that the attackers continued to kick Rumi Nath even after she had fallen down on the floor. The police have so far arrested 16 people. Several of the accused are still at large. Rumi Nath’s personal security officers have been suspended for dereliction of duty.
These two incidents reminded the people of the State of another incident in which an Adivasi girl, Laxmi Orang, was stripped naked and assaulted by a mob in broad daylight in the central Beltola locality of Guwahati on November 24, 2007. Only three persons were arrested in the case.
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data on crimes in Assam in 2011 show that the State came third, after Kerala and Delhi, in crimes against women. The rate of violent crimes against women in 2011 increased to 36.6 per cent in Assam, with Kerala recording 44 per cent and Delhi recording 37 per cent. The all-India average of violent crimes against women in 2011 was 21.2 per cent. In 2010, the rate of violent crimes against women in Assam was 33.5 per cent. The Assam government has decided to engage the Tata Institute of Social Sciences to study the reasons for the spurt in crime against women in the State and to suggest remedial measures.
With a population of 3.11 crore (2011 Census), Assam has a total of 8,344 police officials and 53,972 police personnel, of whom only 5.3 per cent are women although the State government has made provision for 10 per cent reservation for women in the police. After the October 30, 2008, serial blasts in Guwahati, the government decided to install CCTV cameras at public places. To date, of the 290 cameras to be installed at 91 places, only 13, seven in Ganeshguri (one of the serial blast sites) and six in Ulubari area, have been installed. In accordance with the project schedule, installation work was to be completed within 12 weeks of confirmed purchase order, which was issued on December 15, 2011. In the light of the recommendation of the NCW to install CCTVs in front of all the 128 pubs in Guwahati, the State government will now be under pressure to expedite the work. Likewise, to implement the NCW recommendation to open a women’s cell in every police station and to deploy special police pickets with women police personnel in front of all the pubs, the government will have to recruit more women.
 Congress MLA Rumi Nath with her second husband, Jaki Jakir, addresses mediapersons in Guwahati on June 30. The couple were beaten up by a mob at Karimganj town in Assam the previous night.
Dr Bhupen Sarmah, director of the Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change (OKDISC), a think tank, says: “Crime against women, more specifically sexual harassment, is increasing at an alarming rate in the country as a whole and this issue must be addressed with much seriousness. The factors primarily responsible for the unprecedented rate of sexual harassment must be located in the sociocultural as well as economic spheres instead of reducing the issue merely to a problem of law and order, and then solutions must be found.”
Sarmah adds: “The patriarchal forms of domination and repression in different segments of Indian society are being reshaped and reformulated by the forces of the unregulated market. The way a woman is projected in the world of advertisement by giant companies, especially through privately owned electronic media, has been dramatically changing the image of a common woman. ‘The commodification of women’s bodies for the promotion of commodities produced by giant companies has perhaps reached a stage of unprecedented vulgarisation. These vulgarised images of women continuously propagated by the market forces have severe implications, besides the promotion of a culture of consumerism. In addition to this, there is another important aspect, which has generally been overlooked. Beyond the popular electronic media, Indian society has also been exposed to an unregulated market of cheap electronic gadgets. The size of this market is enormous and its impact is tremendous in influencing youth, especially students and those who are not economically engaged. This cheap market of electronic gadgets has mainly been instrumental in the perpetuation of an extremely vulgar image of women and the idea that women are only for sexual gratification.”
According to him factors like rapid changes in values, social norms and institutions have also contributed to the process of reshaping masculinity or patriarchy in this age of market fundamentalism. “Therefore, it is necessary to comprehend the entire process of change driven by the market forces. Alongside, it is also pertinent to note the unpreparedness and insensitivity on the part of both the state and society, including the media, while dealing with these changes,” he says.
Another extreme crime that goes unnoticed in the State is the attack and murder, mostly on and of women, in the name of witch-hunting. Gita Rani Bhattacharya, State programme director of the Assam Mahila Samata Society, which implements the national Mahila Samakhya programme in Assam, says that culprits go unpunished as the police register witch-hunting incidents as murder cases and fail to gather witnesses. Generally, the majority of residents of a particular village or the village community are involved because of their superstitious belief in the prevalence of witches among them.
Sixteen organisations, which staged a protest against the July 9 molestation incident in Guwahati under the aegis of North East Network, while describing it as barbarous and most disturbing, said in a joint statement that it was not an isolated incident and there was a trend and pattern in it.
“What is unfortunate about these crimes is that they are often justified on the premise of a severely gendered moral policing and therefore seek to reinforce patriarchal structures. Further, the constant hype and insensitive projection of such events by the media, particularly the electronic media, has led to a lopsided public opinion about the gendered roles of women, their mobility, dress codes and stereotypical position in society. As if committing the crime is not enough, it has also to be videotaped and telecast and graphically described and published in the news. The objective is not to prevent the recurrence of such incidents but to play with the voyeuristic pleasure of the diseased minds for narrow business interests,” the statement said.
“It is high time that the state started talking a language which sees a shift from its approach of ‘protecting’ the ‘victim woman’ to acknowledging the woman who is an equal to men and hence is entitled to each and every right as a citizen, including her bodily autonomy,” the organisations demanded.
Everyday realityBy Sagnik Dutta in New Delhi
THE latest data on crime rates released by the NCRB do little to dispel the bad reputation that the National Capital Region has earned over the years as a den of crimes against women. However, statistics barely reveal the institutionalised forms of violence against women in Delhi. While the blatant acts of sexual violence in the city have drawn much criticism from several quarters, the violence enmeshed in the social fabric often goes unnoticed and unreported. These are relatively “insignificant incidents” that women learn to take in their stride. These categories of violence include harassment of the regional, ethnic “other” from the north-eastern region and the marginalisation of openly lesbian women.
Despite repeated incidents of violence, the levels of gender sensitisation among the police remain very low. The hostile attitude of the police and the scanty number of women in the police force make reporting of crimes difficult.
As per the latest NCRB report, Delhi reported 17.6 per cent of the total number of rape cases in the country in 2011. Among 53 cities, Delhi accounted for 13.3 per cent of the total number of crimes against women, with 4,489 registered cases. Delhi also reported the highest crime rate of 12.4 per cent compared with the national average of 2.9 per cent.
However, this official record is hardly revealing of the everyday acts of violence that women encounter in the city and the general atmosphere of insecurity and paranoia generated by them. Speaking to Frontline, Sehba Farooqui, Delhi general secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), outlined some of the reasons for the low rates of registration of crimes against women. “Women still face harassment and hostility when they approach the police station to register a complaint. At present, women comprise only 7.8 per cent of the police force. The Crimes Against Women cells of the Delhi Police have an FIR [first information report] registration rate of only 12 per cent. Increased gender sensitisation among the police is essential to encourage women to report incidents of violence. Also, an improved public transport system will make women feel more safe on the streets.”
 At Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on July 31, 2011, a "Besharmi morcha", or "slut walk", organised to protest against sexual violence against women.
Annie Raja, general secretary of the National Federation of Indian Women, put the blame for the systemic violence against women squarely on neoliberal economic policies. “Neoliberal economic policies have led to the commodification of women, which has a direct link with the rising incidents of violence against them. There is no dearth of legislation against crimes against women, but there’s little political will on the ground to translate it into action.”
A pattern of violence in recent years has been attacks against women working late night shifts in BPOs and call centres. There has been a spate of incidents in Gurgaon and Noida, and women working in call centres feel that the security arrangements could be improved.
Shubhangini Shukla, a 25-year-old executive with a call centre in Noida, pointed out some specific problems with the security arrangements. “We generally have late night shifts, which get over at about 2 a.m. There is a security guard in the cab when a female member has to be dropped off last. But for some security guards it is their last duty of the day and they fall asleep.”
Shubhangini recounted how the fear of violence looms large. “In some parts of South Delhi, there are narrow lanes where the cab can’t go. In such cases the cab driver is generally supposed to accompany the girl up to her residence. About five months back, my colleague was dropped off near her residence well past midnight at South-Ex and the cab driver refused to accompany her. She was chased by a bunch of goons. Luckily for her, some passersby in the locality came to her rescue.”
In another instance, one of her colleagues travelling to Janakpuri from Gurgaon was alone in a cab with a security guard when a “friend” of the driver got into the cab and started making lewd gestures. “This happened while I was working with another company two years back. There is a need to install a monitoring system that can track the movements of the cabs. That has not happened as yet,” said Shubhangini.Also, there are times when people in charge of transport are not available at night. Shubhangini felt the need for a dedicated helpline meant for call centre workers working on night shifts and frequent monitoring by a third party of the security arrangements provided by call centres.
Gurmeet Kaur, a 35-year-old who has worked with a BPO in Gurgaon for three and a half years, was satisfied with the security arrangements provided by the company. However, she felt there should be more policemen out on the streets at night. “I have been working in Gurgaon for the past seven years. Enhanced security presence at the toll plaza and the entrance from the Dwarka sector will ensure that criminals cannot escape easily after committing a crime. There are not enough policemen out on the streets at night.”
The most glaring instances of everyday violence are perpetrated against women from the north-eastern region of the country. These institutionalised forms of violence often go unnoticed as they are closely linked to general perceptions of women from the north-eastern region as being “loose”, “skimpily clad” and therefore vulnerable to sexual abuse.
Rituparna Borah, a feminist activist from Assam who has been living in Delhi since 1999, explained, “The perception of the girl from the north-eastern region as the bad girl has persisted for some years now. This perception is extended to assume that her sexuality can be violated. There is the derogatory ‘chinki’ term used all the time. Several friends of mine faced attempts at molestation and sexual assault in the North campus while they were studying in Delhi University. We would have lewd letters passed under the doors of our rented accommodation.”
A Delhi University student from Assam said there were many incidents of everyday abuse which were violative of the dignity of women. “I remember, once I was waiting for an autorickshaw outside the university when a bunch of school kids walked towards me. Some of them tried to make conversation with me; when I ignored them they started abusing me, calling me a ‘chinki’. Once while I was returning to my flat in Jawaharnagar two men riding on a bike tried to misbehave with me. A bunch of neighbours got drunk and tried to barge into our flat another time.”
A form of verbal violence prevails against students from the north-eastern region who get admission through reservation; also there is increased moral policing by landlords on girls from the region. The student recalled, “I was studying in one of the premier institutions of Delhi, a girls’ college, where there was massive resentment against students who had got in through reservation. Also, landlords and even hostels place additional strictures on girls from the north-eastern region under the assumption that they are people who drink and dope all the time.”
“The incidents of violence against the north-eastern woman stem both from an assumption about their lose morals and a fascination with a fair-skinned exotic ‘other’,” she said.
Violence towards the “other” also takes the shape of explicit and implicit forms of violence towards sexual minorities. Rituparna, who also works on issues relating to homosexuality, recalls an incident in 2008 when two of her friends living together in a flat in South Delhi were suddenly thrown out by the landlord after he got to know that they were a lesbian couple.
“About two months back, a lesbian friend of mine who dresses up like a man was suddenly caught by the police while she was coming out of a women’s toilet at the ISBT bus stop at Anand Vihar. They asked her what she was doing in a women’s toilet and even demanded that she produce an identity card to prove that she was a woman. There are several such cases of harassment faced by transgender persons every day.”
While instances of rape and molestation get reported, incidents of institutionalised violence against women as well as acts of verbal and emotional abuse happening every day in the National Capital Region do not make headlines.
Unsafe alwaysBy Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed in Bangalore
According to the statistics for 2011 compiled by the NCRB, among Indian megacities (cities with a population of more than 10 lakh), Bangalore has the highest number of crimes committed against women after Delhi. The figure for Delhi is 4,489, while that for Bangalore is a distant 1,890. What is worrying, though, is that Bangalore has moved up for the first time marginally ahead of Hyderabad, which for several years had the dubious distinction of having the second highest number of crimes committed against women.
The NCRB’s annual “Crime in India” report has always stressed how Bangalore – along with Chennai, Mumbai and Jaipur – have booked more cases under ‘Special and Local Laws’ compared with other megacities. Two of them are the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956, and the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961. The high rate of cases booked might partly explain the statistics on crimes against women in Bangalore. The fact is that Bangalore is seeing more gender-related violence than many other cities in India. More than 70 per cent of all cases booked under the Dowry Prohibition Act from among 53 megacities of India were in Bangalore.
 Volunteers of The Blank Noise project against eve-teasing, in Bangalore on June 15, 2005.
What is it that is making this city prone to gender-related violence – both in the private and the public spheres?
Says Donna Fernandes of Vimochana, a women’s rights organisation: “Bangalore has become extremely violent against women, and women are not safe anywhere – they are not safe on the road, in their own homes or in their mother’s womb. This violence against women happens because men feel that they are more powerful than women. The violence really stems from this feeling of power.”
In the past few years, there have been some horrific crimes against women in Bangalore that endorse her view. The most famous of these was the case of Pratibha Srikanthamurthy in 2005. Pratibha was a 22-year-old who was kidnapped, raped and murdered by the driver of the cab in which she was travelling to work for the night shift. The driver was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2010 after a trial that lasted five years.
This sordid case changed the norms for the security of female employees in the information technology (IT) sector. But women who work in the IT sector in the city are not safe even in the privacy of their homes as they are often victims of domestic violence.
Rani Shetty, a counsellor at Vanitha Sahayavani, a women’s helpline for domestic violence, says that 20 per cent of all the cases that come in for counselling at her centre are from IT professionals. “Saturdays are specially demarcated to deal with their cases,” she adds. Vanitha Sahayavani handled 1,189 cases between April 2011 and March 2012.
The notion that domestic violence is more common among the economically backward classes needs to be done away with. There are frequent newspaper reports demonstrating the wide prevalence of domestic violence among all classes of society. Rani Shetty says that half of the people who come in for counselling in cases of domestic violence are educated people. According to Donna Fernandes, the nature of domestic violence has changed significantly with the city becoming wealthier: “I know cases of several people who work in the IT industry. The crimes that the husbands commit against their wives inside their homes are very cruel as they cannot tolerate their wives doing better than they.”
Street harassment
Street sexual harassment is also common in Bangalore. In early 2009, there was a spurt in attacks on women in Bangalore who wore western clothes. This came a month after the attacks on women in a pub in Mangalore in January 2009. It looked like a systematic attempt at cultural policing in Karnataka, but there was fierce resistance from civil society groups in Bangalore against this. One of these groups was Blank Noise, a nationwide volunteer-led community arts collective that seeks to address the issue of “eve-teasing”. According to Jasmeen Patheja of Blank Noise, the collective “pushes the attitude that street harassment isn’t a woman’s issue alone but concerns male behaviour and attitudes perpetuated by patriarchal ideology”.
One of Blank Noise’s campaigns has been to ask female volunteers to send in a garment they wore when they experienced street harassment. It is clear from the range of garments that the organisation received that there is nothing like “asking for it”. Another campaign that the group is working on is to encourage the intervention of the general public. Says Jasmeen Patheja: “The role of spectators is important, and we would like to push forward positive stories of a third person making a difference in street harassment.”
Such campaigns become relevant when you look at data from a Women’s Survey conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in 2008. More than 60 per cent of the respondents in Karnataka responded positively to the question, “Women often talk about feeling unsafe when they are outside the house. What about you, do you generally feel unsafe when you are outside your house?” (While the small sample size of 197 from Karnataka does not allow us to make thorough inferences, it gives us a broad idea as to how women think.) The survey results show that women do not feel safe in Karnataka outside their houses.
Even the girl child is not safe. Aarti Mundkur, a lawyer working on gender issues in the city, points out how female foeticide is on the rise in Bangalore. Two cases of female infanticide and child sexual abuse in the city in the past few months stand out as morally depraved acts. First, the case of Afreen, a three-month-old baby who died after her father battered and bit her in an inebriated state as he did not want a girl child. In the second and equally sensational case, the Indian wife of a Frenchman working with the French Consulate in Bangalore accused him of raping their three-and-a-half-year-old daughter. Pascal Mazurier, the father, was arrested only after the national media drew attention to the dithering of the Bangalore Police. Both these cases have helped draw attention to the urgent need to protect the girl child from gender violence.
Activists feel that the police’s response in cases of street sexual harassment and molestation and in domestic violence is not adequate. “When a woman goes to the police station to register a case of molestation, her character is questioned and often the report is not filed,” says Jasmeen Patheja.
Donna Fernandes is also dismayed by the attitude of the police and the legal system. “The legal system needs to be overhauled as it is not sufficient to deter private and public crimes against women. We have forgotten that the law is there to actually prevent violence. Even after the violence that happens in cases of dowry harassment, there are so many procedural flaws in the police investigation that there is no point in having the law.”
Women & honourBy S. Dorairaj in Chennai
REPORTS of incidents of honour killing, kidnapping, sexual assault, cruelty by relatives and other atrocities against women and girls have triggered a serious debate in Tamil Nadu, a State ruled by the two major Dravidian parties alternately for more than four decades since 1967. Ironically, these parties claim to be rationalistic in outlook and swear by the emancipation of women.
Successive governments have stated that curbing crimes against women is an “area of high priority” for them, but official records indicate a steady rise in certain categories of crime. This has been a cause for concern not only for law-enforcing authorities but also for civil society.
The NCRB’s “Crime in India-2011” and also “Crime Review”, compiled by the State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB) for the corresponding period, point out that crimes against women in the State increased by 3.5 per cent compared with 2010. Of the 6,940 cases reported last year, the highest number, 1,812, fell under the category “cruelty by husband and his relatives”. As many as 1,743 cases came under kidnapping and abduction, and there were 1,467 cases of molestation. These three categories constituted 72.36 per cent of the crimes against women, according to “Crime Review”.
 Dalit women outside their home damaged by caste Hindus at Paraliputhur Indira Gandhi Colony in Dindigul district in Tamil Nadu on February 14, 2011.
The report further said rape accounted for 9.75 per cent of the crimes. Of the 677 cases of rape registered during 2011, as many as 271 victims were children, 11 were Dalits, and three belonged to the Scheduled Tribes.
According to the NCRB report, Tamil Nadu occupied the top slot among the southern States in the kidnapping and abduction of women and girls. Minor girls constituted 29.16 per cent of the victims. Victims in the 19-30 age group accounted for 65.31 per cent.
There is no separate classification for honour killings in official records. However, the Policy Note on Police for 2012-2013, tabled in the Assembly during its recent Budget session, shows a marked jump in the number of murders owing to “love affairs/sexual causes”, from 155 in 2008 to 347 last year.
The State has a long history of honour killings, a harsh reality which castiest elements have always sought to cover up, said A. Kathir, executive director of Evidence, a Madurai-based non-governmental organisation (“Demons and gods”, Frontline, August 28, 2009).
In a memorandum to the Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu on May 15, he highlighted the fact that caste Hindus had murdered six women and four men within a period of five years from September 2008 to May 2012 in the name of “upholding the family pride”.
The crime of honour killing has been perpetrated in Tamil Nadu mainly in the name of “preserving caste purity”. In some cases, caste Hindus murdered both Dalit boys and the caste Hindu girls they wanted to marry. Sometimes they killed the girls who brought “disrepute” to their families by deciding to marry Dalit boys. In certain other cases, the girls were forced to commit suicide to “save their honour”. These criminal acts should be brought under the category of “honour crime”, and exemplary punishment should be awarded to the offenders, Kathir said.
He also urged the State government to sensitise the police, besides bringing pressure to bear on the Centre to enact a comprehensive law to curb honour crimes.
The disturbing trend acquired a new dimension with leaders of certain caste organisations coming out openly against inter-caste marriages. At the recent annual congregation of a most backward community, a leader said that the hands of the youth from “other communities” who married girls from his community should be hacked. Subsequently, he described his remark as an “emotional outburst” on seeing the plight of young women of his community who were deserted by these boys after marriage.
Recently, another dominant community in the western region of the State launched a campaign among students and youth asking them to shun inter-caste marriages. Leaders of certain other caste groups also have appealed to the youth to “preserve the purity, uniqueness and noble qualities of their own community” by not favouring marriages outside their community. These appeals and warnings issued by caste organisations betrayed their anxiety to retain their vote bank, activists point out.
Even as the State government offered cash and other incentives to couples who married outside their castes with a view to “abolishing the adverse effects of caste system and promoting social equality”, casteist forces bared their fangs at them, said A. Mahaboob Batcha, managing trustee of the Society for Community Organisation Trust. He urged the government to take stern action, including de-recognition of the caste-based parties, if their leaders made casteist remarks and incited violence. He favoured steps to rally progressive youth to keep the forces of casteism at bay.
Inseparably intertwined with this problem is the prevalence of child marriage in some rural pockets. In certain cases, child marriage was used as a strategy to pre-empt inter-caste marriage, U. Nirmala Rani, advocate of the Madras High Court and an activist of the AIDWA, pointed out.
Apart from the health and psychological problems faced by child brides owing to their marriage at an inappropriate age, they had to suffer several other issues, such as the denial of proper education.
In this connection, she referred to a recent incident in which two minor girls who got married were not permitted to join class XI in a government school at Melur in Madurai district on the grounds that their presence would set a bad example for other students. The management had to rescind the decision at the intervention of the higher authorities in the Education Department and also the National Council of Educational Research and Training.
Dubbing it “double jeopardy”, Nirmala Rani said that the child bride had already been subjected to violence, and a denial of opportunity to continue her education would amount to “secondary victimisation”. The Melur incident was only the tip of the iceberg as many other cases went unreported, she said.
Describing The Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929, as “toothless”, she said penalising the parents alone would not solve the issue. She argued that the practice could not be curbed without addressing the social and economic reasons for child marriage.
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Man’s world, legally
 Lambadi, or Banjara, tribal couple Vadthya Sukhya and Vadthya Achio with 11 of their children in front of their home in Nalgonda in Andhra Pradesh on October 21, 2011. The couple wanted a male child and had 12 girls before Achio gave birth to twin boys.
Son preference in India is based on patriarchal customs and traditions and the patrilineal form of inheritance, where the inheritance is through the common male ancestor and the sons inherit more than the daughters. Among Hindus it is largely believed that only a son can light the funeral pyre and offer prayers to ancestors, that the son remains part of the family whereas the daughter becomes a part of another family, that kanyadaan (giving away of a daughter in marriage) is a necessary spiritual obligation, and that only a son can provide old-age security. The belief that the daughter does not belong to her paternal/maternal home is so deeply entrenched that even courts have reiterated this belief in a number of cases. In a case in which the accused was convicted of dowry-related murder, the Supreme Court still approvingly spoke about the transference of residence of the girl after marriage.
An inevitable consequence of favouring sons is treating daughters unequally and hence discriminating against them. Some of the major manifestations of son preference are sex-selective abortions, sons being given preferred treatment during childhood while the daughter is discriminated against when it comes to food, medical treatment, education, and so on. A 2007 report on child abuse by the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) highlighted the neglect of and discrimination against the girl child on several counts. The 2001 Census report listed sex-selective female abortions, female infanticide and female neglect – typically by giving girls less food and medical care than boys – as important reasons for the low child sex ratio (CSR) in the country. Throughout her life as a child and as an adult, a daughter continues to be subjected to various forms of discrimination that subjugate her to the men in her family, including her brother or brothers and her spouse, and privilege them over her. This discrimination has been seen both as a cause and as a consequence of son preference.
Laws reflect this discrimination in a variety of ways. Even laws that have been passed to address this phenomenon can, because of non-implementation or because of their inadequacy and loopholes, inadvertently advance son preference. Certain kinds of practices that are associated with son preference or certain forms of discrimination remain to be addressed by laws. A study of laws that overtly or covertly advance son preference has been carried out by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). This study sets out some critical areas of intervention and states that they are critical precisely because laws or the absence of laws in these areas have the greatest impact on the practice of son preference and daughter discrimination.
India has a number of laws ostensibly to end the discrimination against daughters and to prosecute and punish those who commit violence against them. These include civil laws that have been supposedly passed to give equal rights to daughters. Cases in point are the amendments to the Hindu Succession Act to give equal rights in inherited property to daughters or special laws that provide criminal and civil remedies. Laws such as the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection), 1994 (PCPNDT) Act, the Dowry Prohibition Act (DPA), 1961, and the Prohibition of Child Marriage (PCMA) Act, 2006, aim at tackling the issues of son preference and daughter discrimination. Like any criminal law, they punish violators with imprisonment and fines and also provide for certain civil remedies such as getting a marriage annulled in certain situations under the PCMA. Apart from these laws, the Indian Penal Code (IPC) criminalises certain acts in relation to marriage and childbirth. It has also been amended to introduce the provisions of “dowry death” (which seeks to punish dowry-related murder) and “cruelty against a woman” (which defines cruelty as harassment for dowry and mental and physical violence of a grave nature).
For a law to be effective, however, it has to be implemented and enforced. The government has a poor record of implementing these laws. The PCPNDT Act was passed as far back as 1994, but it took the government two years to bring it into force. The Act is, in fact, a classic example of non-implementation of a law. It was not even notified in some States for several years. The authorities envisaged under the law to monitor, supervise and enforce its provisions – the Appropriate Authorities, Advisory Committees, and State Supervisory Boards, for instance – were not constituted in a number of places. In places where the Appropriate Authorities were constituted, they had only two persons, one of whom was often a doctor. They were hesitant to take action against other doctors. Deliberate inaction by the state resulted in those guilty of violating various sections of the Act not being punished. Most of the cases filed under the Act relate to non-registration of clinics and machines and are not against doctors who are the major culprits fuelling sex selection. As expected, very few convictions have taken place under the Act.
Similarly, under the Dowry Prohibition Act, the state has not often fulfilled its statutory obligation to appoint Dowry Prohibition Officers to oversee the functioning of the Act and report cases. Even in cases where officers have been appointed, the appointees are often government officers with other regular duties. The lack of implementation of the Act has also shown that the Central and State governments have, perhaps for a variety of reasons, not been serious about stemming the rising tide of dowry. In one case in 2005, the Supreme Court gave directions to the Central government to implement the Act by various means, including the setting up of an appropriate machinery.
Other instances of non-implementation include deliberate police inaction in several criminal cases relating to dowry and non-registration and non-prosecution of such cases by them. Criminal laws continue to be honoured more in the breach than in the observance. It has been reported that the police in charge of registering and investigating offences refuse to register cases or refuse to investigate them properly. The prosecution of these cases in court also leaves much to be desired. Corruption, inefficiency and gender bias among members of the police force are factors that are reported in several cases involving ordinary women. Courts also deal with most of the criminal and civil cases in a casual/lackadaisical manner, and it takes women years to get justice in several cases.
Increasing incidence of corruption in the court system is also being reported. These highlight the need for extensive reforms in the police and judicial systems to make them more responsive and sensitive to women’s issues. The record in implementing the laws is so appalling that a number of activists working with women have opposed framing new laws, particularly criminal laws. They contend that the laws that exist do not get implemented, and it would be better to make the police and judicial system more accountable in implementing them than enacting new laws.
Gift & dowry
Some of these laws also, perhaps inadvertently, propagate and advance son preference. These laws contain either loopholes or provisions that continue to favour men and promote son preference. It is important to mention that apart from the problem of non-implementation, laws also contain faulty or inadequate provisions and other loopholes. The practice of dowry promotes son preference, and it has also been cited as a reason why pre-natal sex selection takes place. The Dowry Prohibition Act is an enactment that was ostensibly passed to stem the practice of giving and taking dowry.
Though the growth of the system of dowry can be attributed to various socio-economic reasons, including caste-based arranged marriages, increasing consumerism and the general non-implementation of the Act, the Act itself contains several loopholes that make the conviction of an accused in a dowry case difficult. One such loophole is the definition of gift as distinct from dowry in the Act. The vagueness of this definition makes it possible for a person to contend that what was taken during the marriage was a gift and not dowry. The definition of dowry has also not been carefully crafted. It defines dowry as any “property” or “valuable security” that is given prior to, at the time of or after the marriage in “connection with the marriage”. This has allowed certain judges with a patriarchal mindset to reason absurdly that what is given after the marriage on certain occasions and festivals cannot be construed as dowry unless a direct connection to the marriage is shown.
 Signboards in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh, stating that prenatal sex determination is an offence.
The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1960, was amended in 1983 and 1986, but some important amendments suggested by women’s groups and the Joint Parliamentary Committee set up to look into the functioning of the Act were ignored. The Act itself is couched in neutral language which suggests that dowry can be taken not only by the bridegroom and his family but also by the bride and her family. This neutral language was used in spite of the self-evident fact that the practice of dowry adversely affects only the bride and her family.
Child marriage is another grave form of violence and discrimination that a girl child faces. Though child marriage, being forced marriage, normally affects both boys and girls, it has a far greater and more adverse effect on the girl than on the boy. Child marriage is a human rights violation since it is akin to child abuse. For many girls it is the beginning of frequent and unprotected sexual activity that can have serious health consequences. It compromises the all-round development of girls and affects their education. It results in social isolation since the girl child is sent away from her familiar social surroundings. The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2005, is a much improved version of the Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929, and provides for greater punishment to persons who are responsible for or participate in the marriage of a child.
It also allows a child marriage to be declared void at the option of the contracting parties, that is, if either the husband or the wife petitions the court before a certain age. However, the main problem with the Act is that it does not invalidate a child marriage. In other words, the law does not make a marriage invalid even if it is performed when the child is an infant or at the puberty or adolescent stage. Such provisions make the Act totally ineffective. This Act is also not implemented by the state. For instance, mass child marriages are openly performed in some parts of the country on occasions such as Akha Teej in Rajasthan. It has also been reported that police personnel often refuse to take action to stop these marriages.
Inheritance laws
Personal laws that deal with inheritance rights seem to propagate son preference. The Hindu Succession Act (HSA), 1956, which was extensively amended in 2005, still contains provisions that favour a woman’s husband’s family. This Act contains provisions that stipulate that even the self-acquired property of a female Hindu dying intestate will, in the absence of her husband and children, devolve upon the heirs of her husband and not on her father and mother. The provision seems to be based on the customary and traditional belief that after marriage a girl belongs to her husband’s family and not to her natal family.
A recent judgment of the Supreme Court showed how inequitable this provision is: the self-acquired property of a woman who had been ill-treated by her in-laws and lived all her life with her parents devolved upon her in-laws. Further, land reform laws such as the Uttar Pradesh Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act, 1950, contain provisions that discriminate against a daughter’s inheritance rights despite an amendment to the HSA that deleted an earlier provision saving such laws. A recent judgment of the Delhi High Court has, however, held that the provisions of the HSA shall prevail over the provisions of the Delhi Land Reform Act, 1950, that give unequal inheritance rights to women. Under Muslim Personal Law also, daughters and wives continue to inherit a much smaller share than the sons.
Studies have also shown that Hindu women continue to be deprived of their inheritance through wills. Even in the absence of a will, women have been forced to give up their share in favour of their brothers for various reasons. One of the reasons often cited is that they are scared of breaking familial bonds. It has, therefore, become necessary to devise ways to ensure that daughters do not lose the right to their inheritance.
Among legal provisions son preference is promoted by some panchayat and municipal laws that coercively enforce the two-child norm and have been seen as being anti-human, anti-women, and anti-poor. These laws exist in Gujarat, Odisha, Maharashtra and Rajasthan.
 Vinod, 16, from Pali village near Patna in Bihar, and his bride, Pratima, 14, after their marriage on June 17.
In certain areas, there is no law to deal with discrimination and violence against girls and women. For instance, in the absence of laws to address discrimination against the girl child at home and outside, discrimination and abuse continue without any remedy or punishment. This can lead to further devaluation of the girl and can become a reason for a family’s not wanting a girl child. The absence of a law that gives an equal share to women in marital property also promotes son preference.
Not an equal partner
The denial of equal right to marital property seems to suggest that a woman is not an equal partner in a marriage and the woman’s contribution to building up a household and her role, in almost all cases, as the primary care-giver of the children, has no value. When women are deserted by or separated from their spouses, they are mostly forced to go back to their natal homes where also they are not welcome. Killings and crimes in the name of honour are deeply gendered crimes that seek to suppress the fundamental right of a girl to enter a relationship of her choice and live with dignity.
Finally, it is necessary to look at policies that promote son preference. The UNFPA study, apart from examining such laws and citing landmark cases that highlight son preference or daughter discrimination, has suggested ways to amend or introduce laws and change policies to ensure that the norm of son preference does not continue to be a part of the legal structure and government policy. This may not, by itself, be enough to reverse the deeply entrenched discrimination against daughters but would be more than a step in the right direction.
Kirti Singh is a senior advocate in the Supreme Court and former member, Law Commission of India.
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The Hindu
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article3683353.ece?css=print
July 25, 2012 23:25
No peg to hang a news story on
PTI ABOUT DENIGRATION:
Activists in Ahmedabad protest the incident that occurred in Guwahati.
Media coverage of sexual crimes must necessarily balance society’s right to
know, with the survivor’s right to privacy.
Two primary concerns overlap in the Guwahati molestation case of
July 9: one, the deeply pervasive culture of sexual harassment/assault in the
country; two, aggravated media coverage that follows no norms and sets few
limits for itself.
Neither of these are startlingly new developments. We need just
recall the media treatment accorded to the battered body of an English teenager
in February 2008 in Goa, the murder of another teenager in Noida a couple of
months later that same year, and the reported gang rape of a student at the Tata
Institute of Social Sciences in 2009. And these are just a few cases that came
to national attention. One need only visit YouTube to see how ubiquitous are
stories put out by news channels all over the country that revolve around women
being stripped, assailed, slapped, assaulted, violated — on the streets, in
police stations, inside homes.
In all these instances, the salaciousness of the television
footage, or in the details faithfully garnered for news reports, are only
matched by the sanctimoniousness of the accompanying script. After News Live
“broke” the Guwahati story, it was a virtual free-for-all, with every channel
rushing for a piece of the high decibel action. But anchors always made sure to
speak of how society has been shamed, shocked, cursed by the incident and lament
copiously over the fate of a schoolgirl being mauled by barbarians.
Looking at coverage
What is striking about such coverage is that its aim – despite the
pretence of representing a higher morality – is to titillate, not correct;
sensationalise, not sensitise. This, in turn, means that more of such coverage
does not lead to less sexual violence in society. Take two other cases from
Assam. In November 2007, a tribal woman was kicked and stripped on the streets
of Guwahati, when she was part of a rally demanding tribal status to tribals
working in the State’s tea plantations. Five years later, in a strikingly
similar repeat, you see hoodlums kick a woman MLA in a recent incident in
Karimganj district. In the first incident, the woman was being ‘chastised’ for
making an outrageous demand on behalf of her community; in the other, the woman
was being ‘punished’ for entering into a marital relationship that went against
dominant norms. But somewhere it appears that the largely unquestioning coverage
accorded to such incidents actually helps to normalise bestial, sexually charged
behaviour of vigilante individuals or mobs and drive home the justification that
women who transgress need to be checked, and if this means assaulting their
bodies, so be it.
It is entirely of a piece with this script that you have
statements from various hallowed corners of the country, the head of a woman’s
institution here, a minister there, which don’t talk about these indefensible
actions but focus on the ‘behaviour’ of the assaulted woman. They demand that
she dresses more appropriately, conducts herself more carefully, etc, etc. By
transferring the guilt from the perpetrators of such attacks to the subjects
themselves, these high eminences are actually condoning the culture of
entrenched misogyny that leads to the routine denigration of women everywhere.
So what is to be done? Should there be some “enlightened”
regulation of media coverage of such matters? The storm of protest that greeted
the Supreme Court deliberations on framing guidelines for media coverage of
matters that are sub judice — one of the related petitions before the apex court
interestingly argued for minimising the portrayal of sexual abuse and violence
in television coverage — indicates that there is a justifiable concern that any
attempt to regulate the media could mean bringing in a censorship regime through
the back door.
Self-regulation
But if external regulation is an abomination, then we need to
ensure that media functioning is not anathema. How serious are the media in
India, including those that have come to be termed as the corporate media, about
self-regulation? How seriously are they, and the professionals who comprise
them, willing to subject themselves to the rigours of setting standards for
themselves and defending these standards every day? Rupert Murdoch, let us
remember, had a very thick manual called “Standards of Business Conduct” for
News Corp — some might say his ethical problem first arose from the fact that he
saw his media empire as a business empire. But that manual didn’t take News Corp
very far when it came to the hacking scandal which eventually rendered the
News of the World extinct.
When it comes to self-regulation in terms of covering sexual
crimes against women, things get complicated given their exceptional and
intimate nature. It would help, of course, if basic but little understood
principles are understood once and for all, and not just at individual, but
institutional levels.
That women have equal rights, including the right to free movement
and bodily integrity; that coverage of sexual crimes must necessarily balance
society’s right to know, with the survivor’s right to privacy. That such
coverage should be premised on the fact that in a case of rape or sexual
assault, a victim’s personal life, physical appearance, wardrobe, and past
history cannot deflect from their status as crimes that demand justice. Finally,
that the media must not, in its hunt to beat the competition, use women’s bodies
as pegs on which to hang their stories.
|
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The Daily Beast
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/25/do-u-s-women-need-guns-self-defense-expert-paxton-quigley-says-yes.html
Do American Women Need Guns? Self-Defense Pro Paxton Quigley Says Yes
As the debate over gun control rages in the wake of the Colorado shootings, one self-defense expert tells Abigail Pesta that handguns play an important role in society: they stop rape.
|
Paxton Quigley remembers the moment she decided to get a gun. It was more
than two decades ago, when a female friend in Los Angeles called her late one
night with some terrible news. A stranger had broken into her home through a
bathroom window. She had called 911, but the police had arrived too late—a half
hour after a brutal rape.
“I asked my friend, ‘If you’d had a gun, do you think you could have stopped
the attacker?’” Quigley recalls. “She said yes.”
Quigley took a gun course soon after. “I had never shot a gun. I had never
touched a gun. I was actually antigun,” says Quigley, who was working in public
relations in Los Angeles at the time. “But I thought, ‘This is never going to
happen to me.’”
That first gun course gave her a headache. “I didn’t like the noise; I didn’t
like the kick of the gun. I got home and fell into a deep sleep,” she says.
“When I woke up, I felt so good—I knew how to shoot a gun.” Quigley bought a
handgun and took a range of shooting and self-defense courses. Since then, she
has taught more than 7,000 women how to shoot, has written four books on why she
feels women should arm themselves, and has even designed a handbag with a holster. For her most recent book,
Armed and Female:
Taking Control, she talked to dozens of survivors of violence and sexual
assault. “Almost all said they could have stopped the attack with a gun,” she
says.
She is quick to say that she is not advocating assault weapons. Following the
recent tragedy in Colorado, in which the shooter reportedly bought 6,000
rounds
of ammunition on the Internet, then used weapons including a shotgun, a pistol,
and a semiautomatic rifle to kill 12 people and injure dozens more, Quigley says
she believes assault weapons should
be banned
and that ammunition should not be sold online.
“We all feel terrible about what happened,” she says. “I think it will be
interesting if we can ever find out what motivated this
young man to do this terrible thing. It’s emblematic of what’s happening in
our society today—more people are irresponsible; more people are selfish.
There’s less feeling about other human beings.” However, she says, banning all
guns is not the answer.
“Every 2 minutes, a woman is sexually assaulted in the U.S. There are 207,754
victims of sexual assault each year. Eighty percent are under the age of 30,”
she says, citing statistics from the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network,
or RAINN. “That’s a
lot of women walking around who are targets. They’re talking on their cellphones
or texting, totally unaware of what’s going on. It’s part of the reason why
people get themselves into trouble.”
“A woman will be antigun, but then once she’s assaulted, she wants a gun.”
It’s also why, she argues, women need a handgun. “There just aren’t many good
weapons to protect yourself other than a handgun. If you want to stop an
attacker, you have to think about the best means of stopping an attacker.” She
adds, “It would be nice to live in a world of utopia, but that’s not the case.
I’m a liberal. I’m pro-choice. I’ve never voted for a Republican. I just believe
guns protect women.”
And what if the rapist also has a gun? “Then you better shoot first,” Quigley
says. “If you feel that you can’t use the gun, don’t own it. You have to be
ready to stop the attacker. Don’t hesitate. If you want to have a handgun, you
have to be trained—I’m not just talking a course for an hour or two, but an
all-day course at least. Then go to the range afterward and
practice.”
An estimated 250 million guns are in private circulation in the U.S.,
according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab. There were 8,775 homicides
from firearms in 2010, according to the latest data from the FBI, with 6,009 of those homicides coming from
handguns.
Quigley argues that “a large number of gun homicides are among young men, and
a high percentage of these homicides are gang-related. This is not to say that
these homicides are OK—far from it, but rather that these statistics reflect a
subset of the American population and do not represent the broad-based
population.”
Banning all guns is not realistic, she says, because “there’s a huge black
market out there. You know who would be getting the guns? The bad guys. In
Norway, they have very, very strict gun laws, and yet a man was able to get a
gun and shoot a lot of people last year.”
She also argues that alternate weapons such as Tasers, pepper spray, and
knives are not the best defense.
Tasers, which fire off a jolt of electrodes, incapacitating an attacker, can
be a risky bet, she claims, because “you just get one shot” before you have to
reload. “If it doesn’t hit, you’ve got a problem.” (If you miss, you can still
use the Taser to shock the assailant by pressing the tip of
the weapon directly against the person's body, according to Taser.)
As for pepper spray, she says, “It can be hard to use out of doors. It comes
out as a long stream, and if there’s any wind, it won’t necessarily hit the
attacker—and it could blow back and hit you. You also have to hit the skin, so
it means spraying to the face at a fairly close range.”
Of knives, she says, “I don’t recommend knives unless you’ve been highly
trained, because they can easily be taken away from you.”
She disagrees with the argument that having guns in homes means children will
get shot. “Rarely do you hear about a kid getting hold of a gun and shooting it.
Three-year-olds can’t pull the trigger,” she says. “Most law-abiding citizens
have their guns in a safe.” She adds, “I get a lot of flak for my position. I
try to explain it to people. Some will hear it; some won’t. So many women out
there are now living alone or are heads of households. They have to learn to
protect themselves, protect their families. I can tell you this: a woman will be
antigun, but then once she’s assaulted, she wants a gun.”
_____________________________
Ex-TV scribe arrested in Guwahati molestation case
GUWAHATI, July 20 (IANS): Journalist Gaurav Jyoti Neog was arrested here inconnection with the July 9 G.S. Road molestation case, police said.
Neog, who worked for channel News Live, had quit after he was accused of instigating the mob harassing the victim, a teenaged girl.
The journalist has been arrested, Additional Superintendent of Police (Operations) Ranjan Bhuyan, who heads the special investigation team probing the case, told IANS.
"Neog has been booked under Section 294 (obscene acts and songs), Section 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) and Section 34 of the IPC," newly-appointed Senior Superintendent of Police (City) A.P. Tiwari told IANS.
Right to Information (RTI) activist Akhil Gogoi had alleged that Neog, who was present during the molestation of a teenage girl by a group of youth outside a pub on the busy G.S. Road, had instigated the crowd to strip the girl in public.
The activist had produced the video footage of the whole incident before the media to prove his allegation and also submitted the footage to Assam police chief Jayanta Narayan Choudhury.
Neog had resigned from the channel following the controversy. The channel's editor-in-chief Atanu Bhuyan had also resigned from the channel later.
However, Amarjyoti Kalita, whom the police have dubbed as the main culprit in the incident, is still at large.
_____________________________
Molestation prime accused surrenders in Varanasi
LUCKNOW, July 23 (IANS): The prime accused in the Guwahati molestation case has surrendered to police in Varanasi city, police said Monday.
Uttar Pradesh Police officials said Amarjyoti Kalita, who surrendered at the Lanka police station in the city, was not arrested as the crime was not committed within their jurisdiction, but the Guwahati police have been informed and a picture sent to them.
Kalita, whom Assam Police dubbed as the main culprit in the July 9 molestation of a teenaged girl right on the busiest road of the state's main city, was on the run since the incident, though the other 12 accused had been arrested. A TV journalist, accused of instigating the mob, is also in police custody.
_____________________________
BJP slams Congress's 'insensitive' handling of Assam molestation case
NEW DELHI: Hitting out at the Congress and the Assam government for its
handling of the Guwahati molestation case where authorities have revealed the
name and photograph of the victim, BJP
sought to know how a party "headed by a lady" was dealing with this issue in
such an insensitive manner.
"BJP not just condemns the incident, but also the totally insensitive way in which the Assam government, the National Commission for Women and Congress party has handled it. It is something that the nation will have to condemn in no uncertain terms," BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said.
"BJP not just condemns the incident, but also the totally insensitive way in which the Assam government, the National Commission for Women and Congress party has handled it. It is something that the nation will have to condemn in no uncertain terms," BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said.
Hitting out at Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, Sitharaman questioned how "the lady president of Congress party and chairperson of UPA is watching this sham being played in silence?" BJP alleged that Assam was not a one-off case and women had been facing atrocities and harassment in most Congress-ruled states.
The party said the Congress was running a government in Assam which "does not even respect the first condition given in such a situation that the privacy of the victim has to be protected". The Tarun Gogoi government in Guwahati had issued a press statement with the name and photograph of the victim.
Demanding an apology and immediate arrest of the main culprit, BJP said the Congress government in Assam was not even conscious of its responsibility.
"The Congress party and more particularly the CM should apologize to the nation for showing insensitivity in the matter... Was the chief minister trying to score brownie points that the victim met him?" Sitharaman said.
BJP also objected to the role played by NCW in the case and for revealing the victim's identity. "Did the commission issue an official notification forming the investigation team? The team members were not even aware of their responsibilities. Even before presenting their report, their recommendations were being touted as demands for the suspension/transfer of officials," Sitharaman said.
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http://www.asianage.com/print/171760
Assam molestation incident: Journalist to be questioned
By migration@dc.com
Created 16 Jul 2012 - 00:00
Assam Police will soon question a journalist and a camera person of a
Guwahati-based news channel who had video-graphed the molestation of a girl
here.
This was conveyed to the Centre by Assam government which also promised complete overhaul of Guwahati city police, receiving flak for alleged delay in taking prompt action to stop crime and in arresting culprits.
Sources said the state government has told the Home Ministry that police was suspecting that TV journalist Gaurav Jyoti Neog might have orchestrated the molestation of the girl by instigating the mob as the prime accused Amar Jyoti Kalita, who is absconding, was reported to be his friend.
Police are likely to ask Neog and the cameraperson about their presence at the spot and what they did to stop the attack on the girl.
"If any culpability is found, they may be arrested too," a source said. In a report to the Home Ministry, the state government gave a detailed description of the whole incident and promised complete overhaul of Guwahati city police.
Assam DGP Jayanto N. Choudhury too spoke to Union Home Secretary R.K. Singh on Monday and briefed him about the incident and police action so far. Seven people have been arrested so far in the incident, which took place on July 9 in the city's busy Christian basti area on GS Road.
Meanwhile, an 82-year-old man has moved the Supreme Court apprising it of the incident of molestation of a teenaged girl in Guwahati by a mob of 16 persons and seeking compensation for her.
In his petition, Satya Pal Anand, a resident of Indore in Madhya Pradesh, has sought the apex court's directions for awarding Rs. 27 lakh as compensation to the victim.
He has also sought dismissal of the Assam government for allegedly 'failing to function in accordance with the Constitution of India'.
This was conveyed to the Centre by Assam government which also promised complete overhaul of Guwahati city police, receiving flak for alleged delay in taking prompt action to stop crime and in arresting culprits.
Sources said the state government has told the Home Ministry that police was suspecting that TV journalist Gaurav Jyoti Neog might have orchestrated the molestation of the girl by instigating the mob as the prime accused Amar Jyoti Kalita, who is absconding, was reported to be his friend.
Police are likely to ask Neog and the cameraperson about their presence at the spot and what they did to stop the attack on the girl.
"If any culpability is found, they may be arrested too," a source said. In a report to the Home Ministry, the state government gave a detailed description of the whole incident and promised complete overhaul of Guwahati city police.
Assam DGP Jayanto N. Choudhury too spoke to Union Home Secretary R.K. Singh on Monday and briefed him about the incident and police action so far. Seven people have been arrested so far in the incident, which took place on July 9 in the city's busy Christian basti area on GS Road.
Meanwhile, an 82-year-old man has moved the Supreme Court apprising it of the incident of molestation of a teenaged girl in Guwahati by a mob of 16 persons and seeking compensation for her.
In his petition, Satya Pal Anand, a resident of Indore in Madhya Pradesh, has sought the apex court's directions for awarding Rs. 27 lakh as compensation to the victim.
He has also sought dismissal of the Assam government for allegedly 'failing to function in accordance with the Constitution of India'.
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Guwahati molestation case: Assam Police gets custody of main accused
Edited by Shamik Ghosh | Updated:
July 24, 2012 15:11 IST
Kalita after his arrest in Varanasi
Varanasi/Guwahati: Amar Jyoti Kalita, the main
accused in the Guwahati molestation case, was sent to a five-day transit remand
today by a Varanasi Court as sought by the Assam Police. A team of policemen
from Guwahati arrived in Varanasi this afternoon to take custody of Kalita, who
was filmed as he led a mob of 50 in molesting a young woman in Guwahati. He was
the man in a red T-shirt seen smiling on video as he tried to rip the woman's
shirt.
Kalita was arrested yesterday in Varanasi; he had been missing
since the Guwahati video went viral and there had been various reports about him
being spotted in Odisha, Maharashtra and West Bengal. When he was finally
arrested in Uttar Pradesh, local police officers said he was vague when
answering questions put to him.
Wearing a black and white check shirt, a
clean-shaven Kalita has lost his smile in police custody. In the video aired by
a news channel in Guwahati on July 9, the camera did not seem to bother Kalita -
he smiled as he led a group of men who fell upon the victim, dragging her back
when she managed to run a few feet in a futile attempt to flag passing cars for
help. Kalita refers to himself as James Bond in his Facebook profile; his photo
there shows him wearing the same red shirt that he wore on the night of the mob
attack.
Gaurav Jyoti Neog, a
reporter from the channel that filmed the molestation in Guwahati, was arrested
last week. He is a close friend of Kalita's, according to the police. They also
say he incited the mob to attack the victim.
The public assault was
filmed by another reporter from the channel that Mr Neog worked for at the time.
NewsLive says when its reporters realized they could not fight the mob to rescue
the girl, they decided that filming the incident would help provide evidence
that would nail the accused.
The Assam chief minister said last week that
Kalita had been spotted in Mumbai and that the police was tracking him. Earlier
yesterday, the Guwahati police said Kalita had been spotted near Kolkata. They
said his photo would be flashed on local channels, with offers of a reward for
information that could help locate him.
______________
More prank calls to Dial 100 after Assam girl molestation
GUWAHATI: Assam
Police's ambitious project 'Dial 100' introduced to extend help to public in
distress is currently suffering as most calls made to the number are prank
calls. The prank calls asking police help increased after the GS Road
molestation as police urged the public to dial 100 for prompt action after the
incident.
The project was first introduced as part of the modernization drive of state
police in 2009, but was formally launched in March this year by chief minister
Tarun Gogoi.
"We have asked people to call our control room immediately after they encounter any security issues or other emergencies. People inquisitive about the effectiveness of our service make these calls and our team rushes to the site only to realize that it was a hoax," the official added.
A source said, "In the last fortnight, we received nearly 6,200 calls, of which only 80 to 90 calls were genuine." Earlier in April, the total number of calls received were 42,352, of which, 40,963 were false alarms and 103 were genuine cases.
The control room is headed by an Additional SP, has one supervisor and 40 employees to receive calls in four shifts on a 24-hour basis, mainly in cases like theft, accidents, fire, car thefts and others.
"The control room can take 30 calls at one go and is connected to 22 patrolling vehicles, which act according to our instructions. Despite being a highly commendable emergency service, people's support is a must," said an operator of Dial 100 control room.
The initiative was taken by the Union home ministry to provide emergency service to people of the city, where the rate of accidents and crimes have registered a steep rise. The state police are planning to extend the service to other towns like Silchar, Hailakandi, Karimganj in Barak valley and Golaghat, Jorhat, Dibrugarh, Tinsukia in upper Assam.
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Assam molestation: 'I was thinking of killing myself'
July 13, 2012 22:47 IST
She would have committed suicide after the barbaric
assault on her on the streets of Guwahati on Monday night but for the moral
support pouring in for her from all over Assam.
"I was thinking of committing suicide after the video
footage of the assault on me was beamed by TV channels and released on public
domain, but decided against it after the moral support I received from the
people of Assam during last few days," she said in Guwahati on
Friday.
"I would not have gone to attend the birthday party
of my friend had I known that such an unfortunate incident would befall on me.
It happened when I had come out (of the bar) to the street with my friend who
saw some youth making video. When resisted those youth pounced upon me as I was
about to get into an auto rickshaw," she said.
"They even tried to tear off my clothes while I was
crying for help. There were onlookers and the media was busy video-graphing what
was unfolding. I was saved only when the police arrived at the spot. What has
happened to me should not happen to anyone else. I have been devastated and my
life has been spoilt. Those who have committed the crime should be given
exemplary punishment," she said.
Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi [ Images ] on Friday night ordered a
high-level inquiry into the mob assault on a hapless young woman on Guwahati
street on last Monday night.
Additional Chief Secretary Emily Choudhury has been
entrusted to conduct an inquiry into the barbaric assault on the woman who had
just come out of a bar on G S Road in Guwahati. The inquiry report is to be
submitted within 15 days.
Meanwhile, at least seventeen frontline NGOS in Assam
on Friday condemned the molestation of the young woman.
In a statement the NGOs said, "What happened on the
late evening of 10th of July is an assault not only on a girl but also on the
freedom of the individual in a public space. The incident of chasing and
sexually abusing the teenager in the full glare of TV cameras in the late
evening hours at GS Road, Guwahati, is barbarous and most disturbing. Had it
been a stray and isolated incident, this could have been termed as an
aberrational human behaviour. But, that is not what it is; rather there is a
trend and pattern in it. What is wholly objectionable is the legitimisation of
such violence inflicted upon women in the society."
"Following this there has been an increasing
disappearance of a safe public space for the citizens. Clearly there has been an
alarming increase of such incidents in the recent past. What is unfortunate
about these crimes that they are often justified on premises of a severely
gendered moral policing and therefore seek to reinforce patriarchal structures,"
the statement noted.
"Further the constant hype and insensitive projection
of such events by the media, particularly the electronic media, has led to a
lopsided public opinion about the gendered roles of women, their mobility, dress
codes and stereotypical position in society. As if committing the crime is not
enough, it has also to be videotaped and telecast and graphically described and
published in the news. The objective is not to prevent the recurrence of such
incidents but to play with the voyeuristic pleasure of the diseased minds for
narrow business interests. Now, where do we go from here? Shall we keep
interpreting and reinterpreting this or do something about it? The state and the
administration have the most significant role to play," the statement
added.
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Guwahati molestation: system, media, mafia and police
Besides silence, the victim’s reluctance to complain represent the fact that society is not ready to encourage the suffered to complain, but hoots her out with heaped insults and undue publicity. Guwahati victim’s silence is more powerful expression than any vocal attack on the incident.
Political rivals use mafia which depends on media – both telecasting and social media network like youtube – to serve their interests caring a damn for humans and their rights. The molestation in Guwahati, with its reasons and consequences, is not just a stray incident of crime.
Victim’s identity
It is pathetic that despite the victim’s reluctance, her identity is not protected. Even the Chief Minister of Assam Tarun Gogoi does not know the law which protects the identity of victim.
It is unfortunate that he does not even understand the need for such protection, if not he would not have distributed the photo of his meeting with the victim assuring her all possible help. Like any other politician he too wanted mileage out of it, in the process of which he lost the point of helping or protecting her.
Though he mailed the media not to use the photo, his understanding of the issue remained low. Even Alka Lamba, a member of team of National Commission for Women was totally wrong when she revealed the name of the victim which the later was trying to guard, in a press conference. It was right that Alka Lamba was asked to step down. Neither for shameful incident nor for the grave lapse of unnecessary exposure of victim’s photo, does the CM step down.
CM: the Dhritarashtra
If the incident is shocking, the allegation of Akhil Gogoi RTI activist was much more revealing. He alleged that the News Live channel was owned by a certain minister of the state whose wife is its CEO and the entire 9th July molestation incident had been planned, directed, recorded and uploaded on youtube by the news channel with a political motive. He said: ”We feel there may be a possibility that the entire incident was a part of a greater conspiracy to tarnish Gogoi’s image and destabilize his government …. the Chief Minister was ”weak who kept his eyes closed like Dhritarashtra and it was high time he woke up”.
Akhil Gogoi also demanded that the journalist Gaurav Jyoti Neog, who allegedly instigated the incident, should be arrested immediately along with the prime accused Amarjyoti Kalita. He claimed that he had information that both Neog and Kalita, main culprits of the incident, had a good relation and the latter was made to flee as many facts would be exposed if he is arrested.
Ethics of Journalism
This sensational allegation, if established, would reveal a political conspiracy using the crime and media to destabilize an elected government for selfish reasons. Akhil Gogoi’s allegation that a reporter of local news channel might have been part of greater conspiracy to tarnish image of the Chief Minister has come in as a very handy tool for the Chief Minister who immediately tried to use it for his own purpose.
He has rightly said that it was a case of unethical journalism as the journalist had a social responsibility to inform the police while exercising right to film the incident as part of his professional duty. It is to be noted that the Chief Minister neither elaborate on the political conspiracy theory of the allegation by Akhil Gogoi nor acted against the alleged ministerial colleague and owner of the tv channel for masterminding such an incident with political rivalry.
Assuming that there was no political conspiracy, still the act of local journalist Neog is as insensitive as that of the Chief Minister and NCW representative. If it is political conspiracy, he is acting like an employee to serve political interest of the boss, which again very unethical and unreasonable.
If not, he was like any other contemporary media person, languishing for sensational news visual, equally unethical and irresponsible. This wrongful and unethical priority made the journalist unconcerned with humanity. He never bothered about ordinary human reflection of a responsible citizen who might at least make an attempt to stop it or inform the police without losing chance of recording evidence of crime.
One of the casualties of the horrific incident is Mr. Atanu Bhuyan, the Editor-in-Chief of News Live. He has to quit because of massive public outcry. He claimed that he was not resigning on “grounds of moral responsibility” and stood by his reporter who did his job. It was only because of the footage recorded by him that 12 of the culprits have been arrested, he claimed. Reporter Neog resigned earlier following the allegations by the Akhil Gogoi. He was also interrogated.
Video recording of the attack appeared to be the part of the whole plan. If it is an adventurous recording for establishing crime, the attackers could never appear to be happy and emboldened to do such a nasty act. Inhuman and reckless attitude of journalist and others could be gazed from the visuals which were widely circulated.
The Police
Assampolice, though could reach the spot and prevent further aggravation, failed to nab all the culprits and thus faced the wrath of the people for their portion of insensitiveness also. Without understanding the sensitiveness the City SSP Apurba Jiban Baruah had termed this ordeal of a young girl as a ‘stray incident’ that was hyped by the national media, which made him to loose the position and face transfer.
Besides Government, all the professions involved in this incident should introspect. The ruling Congress party owes an explanation to the state to decide whether it can accommodate such cheap politics where one member of council of Ministers could devise a nasty crime to destabilize the government or replace the Chief Minister.
Choosing woman as a subject of crime should invite the response of the Congress President too. It is welcome that the Broadcast Editors’ Association (BEA) has decided to send a fact-finding team to ascertain media’s role in the coverage. Its team should sincerely try to find out if any TV channel or journalist had actually played a part in the commissioning of the crime and also deliberate on the larger issue of conduct of journalists.
Similarly the Police should examine its role in preventing such crimes. Lastly, what is the role of general public? Can they remain mute spectators? The incident happened in the main road of the capital city where hundreds of vehicles pass-by and hundreds people might notice any abnormal incident, but did not invite any body’s attention.
Silence of the victim can be understood but what about this indifference of the people. Will they introspect and realize? They should remember that it is their outcry that made the editor and reporter to resign. It might be difficult or impossible to prove that media owned by politician master minded the crime. They resigned only because of public outcry, which public in general has to realize as its power.
Morals of the incident
Whole incident is a slap on law, system, mechanism and also media. The morals of the incident are: a) the teenage girls are insecure even in the heart of capital city, b) political rival will use media, mafia and social net work media like youtube to destabilize its own party’s chief minister without any impunity, c) a journalist will act to serve illegal and selfish interests of his political boss or does not care his responsibility as a human being or citizen but would like to grab the video for a sensational story, d) it is good for the victim not to complain, e) it is usual and casual that police would arrive late and its top officers do not hesitate to talk reflecting their indifference, f) leaders do not care to protect the victim but try to use the name and photo of victim for publicity and last but not the least, g) public outcry alone set the public and private institutions right, but people would like to remain mute spectators when a few criminals perform crime in open.
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Guwahati, July 12, 2012
http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Guwahati/Mob-molests-girl-in-Assam-3-held/Article1-887833.aspx
In yet another incident of crime against women, a 16-year-old girl was molested by around 30 men in full public view for about half an hour on Monday night outside a posh nightclub here. The incident was witnessed by hundreds, but no one came to her rescue. The incident would have gone un-noticed but for the footage uploaded on Youtube on July 10. It sparked outrage across the nation — highlighting, as it does, the increasing incidence of lawlessness and crimes against women.
Public pressure finally forced the police to act, and on July 11 and 12, four arrests were made, although main accused Amarjyoti Kalita is still roaming free.
The teenager had gone to celebrate a friend’s birthday at Club Mint on GS Road. She was singled out and targeted after her friends left at 9.30 pm. The police team, which arrived half an hour later, said the group was evicted after a brawl.
The incident stoked massive resentment, with politicians, the women’s commission and civil society speaking up vociferously. Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi set up a committee to probe the incident.
While National Commission for Women chief Mamta Sharma demanded the police “take the matter seriously”, CPM MP Brinda Karat called for prosecution of the police officers.
Assam Police chief Jayanta Narayan Chowdhury said the police were not an ATM machine — dispensing instant service — which earned him a reprimand from union home minister P Chidambaram.
“Every incident of molesting a woman is condemnable... anyone who tries to make light of the incident is condemnable,” Chidambaram said.
Team Anna member and RTI activist Akhil Gogoi, meanwhile, created a sensation when he claimed that a reporter of NewsLive TV channel — which shot and aired the video on Monday — was the main culprit.
“The reporter and his friends were at the bar and they passed comments about the girls, which started the brawl,” Gogoi said. “The reporter instigated his friends to assault the girl.”
Amarjyoti Kalita, the main accused, is a friend of the reporter, Gogoi said. “They went to the bar in the reporter’s Hyundai car. They are being safeguarded by the owner of the TV channel.”
Gogoi claimed he had a CD about the NewsLive reporter’s involvement. “I will give it to the police and the media,” he added.
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Assam | Updated Jul 23, 2012 at 10:20pm IST
Guwahati molestation case: Key accused arrested Amar Jyoti Kalita in UP
Varanasi/Guwahati: On the run for two weeks, Amar Jyoti Kalita, who was filmed leading a mob of 50 in molesting a young woman in Guwahati, was on Monday arrested in Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh following a tip-off from Assam police. Kalita reportedly surrendered at the Banaras Hindu University Police Chowki in Varanasi on Tuesday.
DIG Varanasi Satish Ganesh said that a man claiming to be Kalita surrendered before the police on Monday afternoon. Ganesh said that Uttar Pradesh Police have contacted their counterparts in Assam to identify and verify the claims being made by the man. The molestation incident, which was aired by a news channel on July 9, outraged the nation. The video clip showed a smiling Kalita in a red T-shirt trying to rip of the shirt of the woman as she walked out of a pub. He was joined by a mob who dragged and molested her.
Kalita fled Guwahati after the molestation video went viral on the Internet and was shown by news channels. He was seen in Odisha, Mumbai and Kolkata. Kalita was seen at the Howrah railway station only three days ago.
Kalita is said to be a friend of the TV reporter who shot the molestation video on July 9. The journalist of NewsLive TV, Gaurav Jyoti Neog, was arrested last week.
Neog has been booked under 11 counts including intention to insult the modesty of a woman, obscene act and disturbing public tranquility. The Editor of NewsLive Atanu Bhuyan also had to resign from his job.
The police have so far arrested 11 people in the case. The unedited footage of the incident was also sent for tests.
The molestation incident took place on July 9. The teenager was molested and the incident was filmed by the NewsLive journalist, Neog. Media took up the incident on July 12, following which there was outrage in the country with activists demanding justice for the victim and action against the beasts.
While the video of the incident went viral on the Internet, 12 accused were identified and their pictures were out not just in Guwahati, but throughout the Internet, asking people to inform the police wherever any of them was seen.
Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi had also set a 2-day deadline for the police to arrest all the accused, which the police failed to meet. While the police has managed to arrest 11 accused, Kalita is still in the custody of Uttar Pradesh Police.
The National Commission for Women had also set up a team to probe the incident. However, the NCW also made a blunder with one of its fact finding committee members, Alka Lamba, revealing the victim's name in the report. Lamba had to quit the committee following the blunder.
With Kalita's arrest, 14 of the seventeen identified in the incident on the Guwahati-Shillong road on the night of July 9 have been taken into custody. Of the 14 arrested, seven are in judicial custody while the cameraman of a local TV who filmed the incident Gaurav Jyoti Nego has been remanded in police custody.
Kalita, a former government employee, was absconding since the incident. A team of Assam police has left for Varanasi to take custody of Kalita.
In the video footage, the victim was shown being dragged back by the mob after she managed to run a few feet in a desperate bid to seek help from passing cars. Since the incident, there have been conflicting reports about Kalita's whereabouts. While one said he was spotted in Odisha, another said he had fled to Bengal. A third report said he was in Mumbai.
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