Sadly, Uttar Pradesh rapes no longer shock

Rapes in Uttar Pradesh (UP) no longer shock — neither the political masters, nor the government and not even the people. Even as there was a national outcry against the recent twin gang-rape, brutal assault and ghastly murder by hanging from a tree in Badaun’s Katra Sadatganj, forcing even the United Nations to sit up and take note, the powers that be in the state are unfazed.

Soon after the incident, opposition parties bayed for the blood of the state’s Samajwadi Party (SP) government, but forgot that the situation during their regimes in the past was no different. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi rushed to the village in the company of national and regional TV crew to express his condolences. “This situation is not acceptable. Women are not safe in this government,” he declared. Little did he remember that in 2011, he had said the same thing when a minor, while herding cattle, was gang-raped in a Lakhimpur Kehri police station and then hung by a belt inside the premises. The only difference between then and 2014 is that the reins of the state have shifted from Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP’s) “Behenji” (Mayawati) to the SP’s “Bhaiyyaji” (Akhilesh Yadav, the Chief Minister).

In 2011, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre did nothing as it depended on the support of the 43 MPs of the SP and the BSP. This time, BSP supremo Mayawati, broke from her tradition of not visiting crime scenes and flew into the village to meet the bereaved family. Before flying off in a private chopper, she held a press meet to claim that it was her sustained pressure that forced the SP government to okay a CBI probe into the incident as demanded by the family of the victims.

She also conveniently forgot that visits by Congress and SP leaders to meet and console rape victims and their families during her stint as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh had drawn sharp rebuke from her. She even termed as “nautanki” (drama) every time some opponent dropped by to meet rape victims. Five of her party’s legislators were named in FIRs for allegedly committing rapes. For the SP government in the state, incidents of rapes continue to be treated with shameful trivialism. Soon after the Badaun incident, a senior police officer, speaking on behalf of the state government, said — almost casually — that rapes happen at a rate of 10 per day in the state. He seemed to question, rather brazenly on why there was so much media glare on the Badaun incident or, for that matter, a series of rapes that happened thereafter in Azamgarh, Etawah and Aligarh. He also blamed the “lack of toilets” in the countryside for the rise in rapes and molestations.

What to say of the police force this officer represents? For not only has the force, which boasts of being the world’s largest such in uniform, with more than 128,000 personnel, it is the same police of which more than 18 senior and junior-rung officials and constabulary have been accused of raping women with impunity.

Last July, a woman was allegedly raped by a police sub-inspector at Kushinagar. The woman, a resident of Gaunahi village, had come to report a crime when she was held hostage and raped. The same month, another woman was allegedly raped by sub-inspector Kamta Prasad Awasthi in Lucknow.

What makes UP stand out from other states in crimes against women is the total impunity and lack of fear for the law. No one seems safe and no place sacrosanct. The mother of a rape victim was recently thrashed and intimidated in Etawah for “daring to go to the police”. In Nagla Preetam, in Farukkhabad district, neighbouring Kannuaj, the parliamentary constituency of Dimple Yadav, the wife of Akhilesh, a 14-year-old girl was torched by a young man, Shrawan Jatav, after he failed to rape her. In SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Azamgarh constituency, a girl was gang-raped a week ago. The latest incident has happened in his nephew Dharmendra Yadav’s parliamentary constituency of Badaun — and one of the accused is a police constable.

A rape victim, dejected at the accused not being arrested by the police, consumed poison at an election rally being addressed by Akhilesh in April. The incident took place at the KM Inter-College Grounds in Bijnore, when the rape victim was trying to reach a point near the chief minister, but was prevented by the security personnel present at the rally. A girl was force-fed acid in Bareilly after a gang of youngsters raped her and then burnt her body with acid to prevent it from being identified. The MP from the area, Santosh Gangwar of the Bharatiya Janata Party, is a minister of state at the Centre with independent charge. Not a word from him so far. His party leaders are, however, chest-thumping on Lucknow’s streets over the Badaun incident — facing water cannons and cane charges.

Teenagers and even infant girls are being brutally and sexually assaulted in the state. Yet, nobody seems to care beyond their statements to print and electronic media. Many rue that things will not change at any time soon. Not certainly as long as Mulayam’s infamous “boys will be boys and rapes are small mistakes” and his son Akhilesh’s “you are safe so why worry” statements continue. Not only that — in January this year, Akhilesh had recommended that a rape case against one of his ministers be withdrawn in “public interest”. Of the 4,917 rapes committed in the state in the last three years, more than 3,421 have been reported from the villages. In the last 10 months alone, more than 1,723 rape cases or attempts to rape have been logged with the police, of which more than 1,300 incidents are from small towns and villages. Official statistics reveal more than 13,263 cases of rape are being heard in various sessions courts across UP. In the last three months, 563 cases have been concluded with 40 of the accused convicted.

Police officers say the law is lax; the government says it has acted on rapes after they have happened; the opposition says the government must go and the people continue to hope against hope. No wonder, rapes in UP do not shock any more. Sadly!

— IANS

Mohit Dubey is a senior journalist.