"Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Babulal Gaur has described rape as a social crime, saying "sometimes it's right, sometimes it's wrong", in the latest controversial remarks by an Indian politician about rape. Akhilesh Yadav, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, where two cousins aged 12 and 14 were raped and hanged last week, has faced criticism for failing to visit the scene and for accusing the media of hyping the story.
"Penis of a five-year-old Dalit boy was allegedly chopped off by the owner of a flour mill for relieving near his shop in Pratapgarh district on Sunday evening. Though an FIR was lodged on Sunday itself, the police arrested the accused on Wednesday..."
Delhi witnessed its first major clash between angry activists and students and the Delhi police under the new government over the sudden and brutal eviction of Dalit families protesting against the rape of four teenaged girls from Bhagana village in Haryana, from the protest site at Jantar Mantar.
"WHEN a distressed father is reporting his daughter’s disappearance to a policeman in India, there are some questions he doesn’t want to hear. “What is your caste?” is one of them. Yet, the father, Sohan Lal, said this was the first thing the police asked him last Tuesday, when he begged them for help. After revealing his low-caste background as a Shakya, Mr. Lal said the officers mocked him and refused to lift a finger. Hours later, Mr. Lal’s daughter, 12, and a female cousin, 14, were found hanging by their scarves from a mango tree in Katra Saadatganj, in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
"At TruthOfGujarat, we recently wrote about how GL Singhal, a quadruple murder accused and the snoopgate protagonist, has been reinstated in the ranks of Gujarat Police last week. Besides confessing how Narendra Modi and Amit Shah had given approvals for gunning down four people which we documented in our earlier article... GL Singhal in his confession before CBI had also spoken about how the duo had interfered with justice in the Sohrabuddin-Kausarbi murder case.
"The Badaun gang-rape explicitly portrays all that is rotten in India. It reveals the pernicious savagery women face as a daily reality. It highlights the peripheral position of individuals belonging to the lower castes... The Badaun gang-rape also re-emphasises the need for a dramatic shift in India’s policy-making and political landscape... The simple fact remains that the lack of toilets and poor sanitation facilities is one of the major reasons women face sexual assault and abuse across the country... The second is the need for institutional reforms, namely police reforms.
"The aggravated sexual assault and brutal murder of two young dalit girls in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh, on Wednesday fills us with anger, raging grief and a deep sense of failure. It is so easy to spirit girls away, like the two cousins were; so routine and everyday to torture them in unimaginable ways; and yet so easy to proclaim that India has moved beyond caste. ..."
"The images of two innocent Dalit girls hanging from a tree in Katra village in Badaun district of Uttar Pradesh and a crowd of spectators looking bewildered at them best describes our national character. We can endure any amount of ignominy, can stand any level of injustice, and tolerate any kind of nonsense around us with equanimity. It is no use saying if those girls were our own daughters or our own sisters, we would still stare at them, bewildered and resigned like anyone in that crowd did.
"...More sinister are the other indicators: the right-wing in India—the RSS and bjp—have never supported women. In their proudly masculinised world, women are a shadowy presence, assuming importance only when they come out in support of their men. So, violent expressions of misogyny and anger towards women do not result in outrage, or a “janta maaf nahin karegi” message. Rama Sene activists can beat up women, a woman journalist’s house can be defaced, yet the party and its supporters won’t express regret..." (Read more.)
