It is over. It got over soon after it
started. She is dead.
They say your life flashes in front of you
when you know you are about to die...
For a rape victim, I believe it would be the
other way round. Your life hence flashes in front of you. That moment you
see how it will turn out for you...
Will you survive? Do you want to? How
different would it be... will you ever be able to heal...How will this one
incident interfere with all that you planned or envisioned for
yourself?
The arguments have ended now. Tomorrow is the
final verdict for December 16 rape case of 23- year old girl.
She was brutalized and then thrown out of a moving bus. This was after raping
her, repeatedly and shoving an iron rod into her. Its the savagery of this case
that made it rarest of rare, and cold blooded. There were demonstrations and
articles and fast-track decisions and what not. There were arguments on
rotten Indian society and status of women, safety of Delhi and inhumanity of the
accused...
I imagine what would have been the reality...
She would have lied on the bed, thinking- if
she was capable of thinking...I wonder if she hoped to recover or was she hoping
for quick death.... I am sure she would have liked to survive. She must have
thought that her purpose is now to see the guilty dead..or was she able to
recall their faces?
Her father, who had invested all he had in
her education must have felt numb. The social prejudices must have dawned on him
thinking what will be the life for his daughter, if she has one
left?
And mother must have had thousand of
thought about her daughter. How was she feeling? How would she shrug away the feeling of this
encroachment? The feeling of being treated like a piece of shit, the feeling of
extreme loathing and disregard. And then there would have been lots of
should-have, could-have, would-have thoughts. Imagining parallel situations in
past that would have led to something else, and squaring back to the helpless
reality. She would have felt renewed faith in God or lost her spirituality
completely.
And how about her friend? How would
have he felt? The guilt of watching this happen. The uselessness of not
being able to do anything. The onus of letting down himself..
How do these incidents change anything or
impact anyone? Does capital punishment set an example? Will it scare-off the
potential rapist? Will it set an example for lecherous men to think twice before
they commit such a crime? Will it be justice for the accused when they sit in
prison waiting for their final day. Will they regret and hope they wouldn't have
done it? I doubt.
From how I see it, they will feel
unfortunate to have done something that got caught. They will feel they are
unlucky to have gotten involved in an incident that blew up to be a
question of national disgrace, and hence interest. Will the men with mentality
of treating women as flesh and object of venting frustration feel scared? They
will say the chances of getting away are so high that its worth the try. Will
capital punishment or a more brutal death, public stoning or castration or
anything worst really float images to the people.
Do bad pictures on cigarette carton shun
smokers or death in families stir insurance sales. There is an impact for couple
of days and then its back to square one. People are slaves of habit. They do
what they do. If its ingrained in their head that women are to be touched and
exploited and raped and left rotting...who can change it. If they know majority
of families will never report rapes of kin due to social challenges, they will
do it. If they know law if highly incapable of judging such cases, they will. We
as nation are increasingly questioning this now. We are looking at systemic
change, but it is so far on the horizon, I hardly see it happening.
Picture this: "I have been acquitted," says
Vishal (all names changed), standing in front of his single-storey, modest house
in north Delhi's Rohini area. A few hundred metres away lives a family whose
six-year-old daughter was brutally raped and cut to pieces by him. The family
lives in constant terror because Vishal, earlier this year, allegedly threatened
to do the same to their younger daughter. No one can or is doing anything about
it...
Capital punishment may not set a complete
deterring example or become a complete solution of what we need. It will not
change the conservatism of society or spark changes in India. The severity of
sentence does not mean true justice too. It will definitely be just a drop
in reducing rapes, voyeurism, stalking , acid attacks etc....
...But scum needs to be cleared. One by
one..if not for the hope of cleaning up, then for the hope of avoiding
repetition. It may not bring complete peace to those accused but then what
ever will. Yes there are questions of other such cases and dealing with them
retrospectively. Start somewhere. If not for setting an example, then for
half-cooked feeling of justice to the victim's family, and nation. Address the
helplessness and sleepless nights. Lead them to a path where they know all that
could be done to salvage things has been done. Give them a reason to seek
peace.
Kill these rapists.
Country owes it to the nation.
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