DNA Edit: No country for women

Another day and another horrific rape case has come to light. This time it is a 35-year-old woman who was abducted from a spot near the MG Road metro station in Gurugram by three men in a sedan and was raped for eight hours with each of them taking turns. All this while, the cab drove through the National Capital Region across Gurugram, Faridabad, New Delhi, Noida and Greater Noida, without coming to anybody’s notice.

Obviously, these men drove through police barriers, which are ubiquitous around the Capital. Without the police being present to check on the vehicles, the barriers are only a cosmetic effort. The perpetrators, well aware of police’s absence, took advantage of it and dared to commit such an act. Unlike the Nirbhaya incident, this case has not met with the same proportions of outrage. This is due, in part, to the sad fact that the NCR citizenry has inured itself to the reports of such dispiriting encounters. This is not to say that the brutality of these incidents does not register on the collective imagination. It does register and that too with sharp notes, evident from the fact that, unlike Mumbai, very few women feel comfortable to step out on the streets of the national Capital at night as though a pall of implied threat hangs over them. This is only natural. Crime statistics justify the fear.

As per the National Crime Record Bureau’s data, Delhi is the rape capital of the country, towering over other cities in absolute and proportional terms. The collective failure of the people and their representatives in treating ‘women safety’ issues with grave and lasting urgency has meant that the rallies and protest marches over gender crimes and safety concerns lose steam sooner than later. This only works to breed a passivity that signals to the police that NCR  residents, and Indians for that matter, are least bothered about such incidents.

Consequently, top bosses in law-enforcement have a cavalier attitude towards allocating additional resources to tackle crime against women. Mind you, the woman was thrown out in Greater Noida, close to the Jewar-Bulandshahr highway where a car was waylaid and four women travelling in the vehicle were brutalised late last month. In the aftermath of the event, the Noida police claimed that they had dedicated more cops for regular and frequent recces in the area. Those claims now ring hollow. In fact, nearly a month after the event took place, the Noida police is yet to make an arrest. As long as our police force remains understaffed, underfunded and lacking in discipline, crimes against women will continue to rise.