Session 14 - India's Daughter.

A few classes ago, we had a discussion regarding a very prominent problem present in the world today, the issue of the rising rates of rape. I got a chance to watch the documentary “India’s Daughter” made by BBC on the famous Indian rape case, the 2012 Delhi gang rape case. For those of you who are not familiar with this case, a 23 year old medical intern along with her male friend had gone out to watch a movie for a night of entertainment, when on their way home they were intercepted on a bus, where the guy was beaten up badly and the girl was raped and eventually both of them were thrown out of the moving bus. While the boy survived with serious injuries, the girl barely managed a few days before she succumbed to the brutal assault. This case made headlines for the following week or two and got national coverage, eventually causing the arrest of those involved.

Now coming to the documentary that was made by BBC and released in 2015, which has once again erupted a roar amongst the population. Look at the tragedy of life, even though the case became one of the high profile cases of its time, the intensity of it died down for a couple of years till the society was reminded once again about the incident through this documentary. Why did people start forgetting the case? Why is it that people were so in support of fighting for justice but eventually it died down? It is because there is no justice given to rape victims at all. I don’t want to get into the argument of what the law says or what the procedure is, I feel that it is atrocious and unnecessary bullshit what people come up with to support their so called “law.” The documentary really shook me up and opened my eyes regarding the mentality of educated people in our society. The lawyers who were defending the culprits had the audacity to come up with sentences like “the girl is like a flower, she should be protected, while the man is like a thorn and it will hurt the flower if the flower is left unguarded.” Well then I feel what should be done is that rape culprits should be castrated and their genitals should be cut off so the “thorns” as claimed unabashedly by the lawyers should be removed from the definition of a man. In the documentary, they showed one of the culprits who made statements like because this girl survived, this case is getting so much prominence, and we should have killed her there and then. Can you see the mentality of these people? Even after committing a heinous crime, they are still trying to justify themselves. The 17 year old juvenile who was one of the prime accused, got saved due to his age and would spend only three years in jail and would roam around freely then. What kind of travesty of justice is this? He should face the harshest of all punishments that wrecks his life forever.

We should worry about the future of the women in our society. Passing death sentences is not enough, as harsh as it may sound; I feel that every rape culprit should be castrated just so it reminds him of the crime he has committed. Doing so, might cause some fear in the minds of people and this can be a guarantee that once castrated, they surely wont be able to rape any other girl themselves.