Earlier this month, a model from Mumbai was raped by three policemen in Sakinaka police chowki and was later subjected to financial blackmail to keep her quiet. This is yet another example of how the people who should be protecting us end up harming us instead. It’s a mark of the horror of the incident, that the petrified model skipped town and returned only yesterday to complain to the Police Commissioner.
Of course, we are appalled at the incident and support her in her distress. But we are sure that men like ML Sharma (the lawyer for Nirbhaya’s rapists) would think differently. After all, he was the same man who said rape is a woman’s fault. ML Sharma would have wanted to congratulate the men on doing their duty as members of Indian society and watchdogs of Indian culture. If ML Sharma had been the Police Commissioner, here’s what he would have said:
1. She is a model. Therefore, she must have been wearing short dress. That is not Indian culture.
2. Being a model is also not Indian culture. It is her fault that she got raped.
3. She is a woman and she was walking on the streets after dark. The policemen were just teaching her a lesson. It is their job to do so.
4. She was raped in a police chowki because Indian women must get the idea that outside their home, without the protection of men from their home, she is not safe, even with police. Because Indian police are not your mai-baap, they are not your ghar ka aadmi, they are your sasuraal.
5. The gold and the money that the police got from extortion was just teacher’s fees. Did they not just teach her a lesson on how Indian women should behave?
6. See how when they asked her to call up family and bring money and gold, she called her boyfriend? She must be living in sin! The police were right to teach her lesson. After all, she is unmarried Indian woman. What is she doing living away from her father’s house?
7.The police commissioner was wrong to arrest those policemen. They were doing it for a noble cause. After all, rape is Indian culture na! If the police don’t protect our parampara, who will?
While the above post is entirely sarcastic and may be amusing for some to read, honestly, it’s outrageous that rapes still continue to happen. All this while, it was mostly the Delhites who protested, while we all did our brand of armchair activism because it was not our city. Well guess what, it isn’t Delhi anymore and we just can’t sit quietly and tolerate this. We all need to really work at a grassroots level to change how men perceive women. Only then will this stop!
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