If statistics are anything to go by, a host of steps to ensure women’s safety since the gang-rape and murder of a physiotherapist exactly three years ago have failed to bring about the desired changes in the national Capital.
As many as six incidents of rapes have been reported everyday on an average in Delhi so far this year. This is a threefold increase compared to 2012. Incidents of molestations have gone up by almost seven times as against 727 such complaints that year.
While these figures are alarming in themselves, it is the different facets of these crimes, which raise concerns. One-third of all rape victims last year were minors.
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Some of these victims are children as young as one-year-olds. Only a few months ago, a 25-year-old youth was caught for allegedly killing and raping over two dozen children in Delhi. For over a year since he went on the crime spree, police were clueless about the identity of the assailant and could not even connect the dots until police stumbled upon him.
Since the horrific gang-rape in December three years ago, there has been a spate of rapes involving two or more men. Last year, for example, every three days there was at least one gang rape reported from the city.
It is also the audacious manner in which some of these crimes are committed, which have led to women continuing to feel unsafe. In one case, an NGO employee walking to her home in a residential colony in Outer Delhi was pulled off the road, killed by two youths who went on to rape the lifeless body.
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In another incident less than a month ago, two men entered into a fashion designer’s home in Shahbad Dairy, raped and killed her, drove her to a forest where they again raped the dead body. In just over a year, there are four cases of rapists assaulting dead bodies.
Police claim that over two-third of rapes are committed by people known to the victims, something the police can do little to prevent. They also say that the increased complaints of crimes against women reflect their approachable nature and their determination not to turn away a complainant.
But women activists point to low convictions to allege a failed justice-delivery mechanisms. This year, there has been only one conviction in a rape case so far. Last year, police could procure nine convictions and 65 in the year before that.
Despite the dismal situation, women’s safety in Delhi figures poorly in the Parliament discussions. Despite Delhi’s notoriety as the rape Capital, only two of the 442 questions asked by Delhi’s Parliamentarians in the Parliament between the budget session 2014 to the budget session 2015 were concerning women, reveals a study by NGOs Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and Praja.
Six incidents of rapes have been reported everyday on an average in Delhi this year