Even as we write this, one more news report came in on how a woman in south Delhi was killed for resisting rape by three men, including one Nigerian and dumped in the drain. Her friend, on the other hand, was unconscious and being held captive in their house. One more rape case, one more FIR.
Over all, in the first eight months of 2015, the Delhi Police registered 7,124 FIRs of rape. But you’ll never believe how many of those cases were solved.
One. A single number one – that’s the number of rape cases solved in Delhi this year. There is absolutely no relief for women in Delhi. On the one hand, crimes against women have continued to rise, with Delhi showing another 20 per cent jump in the number of cases of rape and molestation.
The charge-sheeted cases of rape and molestation alone run to a whopping total of 6,482 cases this year compared to 5,483 last year, reports the Times of India. And when you combine that with the glacial pace at which our judicial system works and the total incompetence of the legal system in failing to nab the criminals, we have one massive pile of mess sitting on our heads, which is our legal system.
What’s more, when the case does go forward, the police and the public prosecutors have failed to produce proper evidence of the crime, leaving the courts with no option to but to let the accused walk free. A news report published by TOI, in March this year, shows that in Delhi, 70 per cent of the accused in crimes against women walked free in 2013-14, without any punishment whatsoever, because the law was unable to prove the crime. This is based on a report published by the Delhi Commission of Women.
This scenario sounds totally scary when you consider that this is all emanating from one city only. On the plus side though, more and more people are now coming forward to report sexual crimes. The reporting rate, apparently, has gone up by 27 per cent. That’s the only increasing figure which sounds slightly positive.
But it offers little consolation when you look at the final picture of how life is for women in Delhi. A growing crime rate and most of the criminals walking free. Is it time for yet another round of protests in Delhi to wake up the administration and effect change, like in the aftermath of the Nirbhaya episode? What say,we all call out ‘Jaago Dilli’?
