While there’s 24/7 coverage of the youth uproar, Baba Ramdev’s lashout against Congress, every politician trying to turn this into a government toppling event, and monitoring the progress of the ‘delhi girl gangrape’, she still remains a John Doe for many. People find it easier referring to her by the unthinkable that she was subjected to rather than her name. So for starters she is DAMINI.
It’s unfortunate that an incident like this had to happen for politicians to ‘agree’ that something must be done about women’s safety in this country. It’s unfortunate that ever since that fateful Sunday, inspite of the nation seething with disgust, wide spread awareness on woman safety, pressure on the government and police for protection,there is still news of at least one woman still being raped every day in Delhi and Bombay.
What are these creatures? Even animals only resort to this kind of brutality for survival or in defense.
Has Damini become a national issue cause she got raped and savagely beaten up along with her friend, before getting thrown out of a moving bus? Or is it because 6 men after raping and beating her up with an iron rod then stuffed the rod into her vagina, damaged her intestines and pulled out her uterus, having rendered her now to the mercy of intravenous fluids for the rest of her life?
The whole nation is praying for her survival. I find that the most ironical. Bed ridden for life, intravenous fluids as only mode of survival, vital body parts being replaced by mental, emotional and physical scars. Euthanasia too will be denied. Tomorrow she will be just news.
Introduce capital punishment against rape. So if Damini wasn’t raped, but an iron rod was still stuffed up her vagina disabling her for life, would the punishment that we’re all demanding be a little less severe? Would it then just be attempt to murder or an assault, because the Indian rape law does not address a woman’s vagina being intruded by a foreign object other than a penis without her consent as ‘rape’. Also acid attacks, slashing of the face with knife, the kicking and beating, the lewd and obscene comments and humiliation, many times killing of their male companions? Do these warrant similar indignity and invoke the wrath of the public to demand death penalty for all of them?
Will capital punishment for rape now mean that the assaulter hence forth ensures that they kill their victims, cause getting caught would only mean death. Whose would they choose?
21st Dec 2012 Bombay – 20 yr old woman from Nepal (name withheld) arrives in Bombay looking for her husband who had been evading her for the fear of paying compensation. After reaching the workshop he claimed to work at, she gets raped by the workshops owner, then by another employee of the workshop who picked her up at a garden she was dropped at by the owner, then repeatedly by a relatives friend who had been sent by the relative to rescue her. All of this in one day, for a husband who lied and never left Nepal in the first place. If capital punishment was in order, would the tormentor have dropped her off at a garden after committing a heinous crime? Or to protect himself, he would've committed a bigger one, murder? Or would he have feared the law and not raped her in the first place?
Hang until death, is just making it too easy for them. Will castrating help? Or will the frustration of not being able to exercise manhood and societal disgrace only create bigger monsters?
Today, I will be scared bringing a girl child into this world. Cause what the world has come to, she’d be unsafe from the age of 6 to 70. Today a woman has to be protected from a father, an uncle, a rejected lover, neighbors, relatives, professors, public transports, employers, fellow collegians, buildings watchmen, a thief breaking into your house. I fail to chalk out one place, just one, any one, where she could possibly be safe.
I would also worry bringing a male child into this world, for fear that god forbid tomorrow if he tries to save a sister, fiancé, mother or any other woman, he too will not be spared.
I strongly believe each man who dares to ever challenge another human being’s safety in any form should be subjected to the same treatment and publicly in addition to serving any form of legal sentence.
So capital punishment or not an acid attack should be paid back by an acid attack. Stuffing a rod in someone’s genitals should be paid back in the same fashion. If a man rapes a woman, his ass should also be served on a platter to any happy takers and publicly- to hell with you human rights! Cause man only fears the worst, when it happens to him.
