Abhimanyu
Judicial rap cover-up
Secrecy continues to prevail over the brutal gangrape and murder of athe 23-year-old paramedic student with the court deciding for in-cmaera trial of the entire case. Meanwhile as the police continues to guard its superior officers, the Delhi High Court took strong exception to the fact that only a junior police officer was suspended in connection with the gangrape of a 23-year-old student here and that senior cops, including the Police Commissioner, have not been made accountable. “Why only ACP, why not DCP, why not the Commissioner have been put to task?” a bench headed by Chief Justice D Murugesan said while expressing its anguish over the non-disclosure of the names of policemen who were patrolling the areas where the girl was raped in a moving bus on December 16.
Not upto the task
With incidents of sexual assault on women continuing unabated, the home ministry decides to clamp down on Delhi’s nightlife. The home ministry has orders shutting down of music in Delhi’s discotheques by 12:30 am and complete shut down by 1 am. 1091 will be distress helpline. In separate meetings with Delhi Lieutenant Governor Tejinder Khanna, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde reviewed the security situation besides functioning of the police. The question here is will shutting of discos and clamping down on city’s night life prevent crime against women ? Some feel till mindset of people across the country is not changed, the crime against women would continued unabated.
Britain tops record
If you think rapes happen only in India, think again. Mirror News reports that crime statistics in UK show show 15,934 rapes were reported to police here in 2010 – about one every 40 minutes. Yet the British Crime Survey, which studies victims of crimes that also went unreported, puts the figure at 80,000 a year. That’s one every seven minutes. In 2006-07, 800 men were convicted of rape. That’s one per cent of all the people who probably raped someone. One per cent. A poll by Amnesty International found a third of all Britons thought a woman who had flirted with her attacker was partly or completely to blame for being raped. This poll was in 2005, not 1605, and it also found nearly twice as many women as men thought a victim was “totally to blame” if she was drunk. In Norway, one in 10 women are raped. There, a similar Amnesty poll found 48 per cent of men think a flirtatious woman is asking for it and 20 per cent thought it was fine if she’d had several sexual partners. Sweden has twice as many rapes per head of the population as the UK. In South Africa a survey of 1,500 schoolboys in Soweto found a quarter of them thought gang rape was fun. According to the UN only one in 10 male rape victims worldwide will ever report it.
In America, one in five women are raped and not long ago it was reported Judge Derek Johnson, dealing with a rapist who had threatened to mutilate his victim with a heated screwdriver, said: “I’m not a gynaecologist, but I can tell you something, if someone doesn’t want to have sexual intercourse the body shuts down. The body will not permit that to happen unless a lot of damage is inflicted, and we heard nothing about that in this case… The victim in this case, although not necessarily willing, she didn’t put up a fight.”
Soft on Razakar
Why was the delay in taking action against Akabaruddin Owaisi, the MIM MLA, who opnely indulged in a hate speech ? Why this lenient attitude when there is a universal condemnation of his (MIM MLA’s) highly objectionable comments. It is the Congress which helped MIM to grow. They still share power in Hyderabad Corporation. Is this the reason why they are soft? MIM had recently withdrawn support to Congress both at the Centre and in Andhra Pradesh but both parties continue to share power in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC).The Congress government has failed to take action against the MIM leaders promptly though they violated the law on many occasions in the past. Notices were issued to Owaisi on January 4 directing him to appear before investigating officers of Nirmal (Rural) police in Adilabad district today and before the Nizambad II Town police on Tuesday. Another notice was served on Owaisi by the Osmania University Police directing him to appear before them on January 10. Two FIRs were registered suo moto in Adilabad and Nizamabad districts, while a third case was filed against the MLA by Osmania University Police following a court directive after he allegedly used ‘inflammatory and derogatory’ language against a particular community at public functions last month. Owaisi has been booked under IPC sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, language etc. and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) and 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs). He has also been booked under IPC section 121 (waging or attempting to wage war, or abetting waging of war, against the Government of India).
