Assam case shows women remain largely unsafe

With the Tarun Tejpal case hogging much of the limelight, the vicious attack on a woman in Assam's lakhimpur district a week ago has received scant attention. Indeed, it would have gone largely unnoticed had locals not protested strongly by blocking National Highway 52 and disrupting inter-State traffic. Initial reports also said that the victim, who succumbed to her injuries on Sunday in Guwahati, was gang-raped by three men, who then threw her out of the shared auto-rickshaw in which they were travelling. This lead to immediate comparisons with the December 16 gang rape in Delhi wherein all-round administrative failure before and after the crime, outraged the nation last year. While the post-mortem report released on Thursday has ruled out rape, the fact remains that the 31-year-old was brutally assaulted — her body bore injury marks all over. Even after she was thrown out of the moving vehicle, she lay dying on the road for about an hour before the state machinery could kick into action. This, despite the fact that the victim was dumped barely 50 metres away from the local police station. A week later, there is still little clarity on what exactly happened inside the auto-rickshaw and how a routine trip to her daughter's school went so horribly wrong for the victim. Even though one arrest has been made and a Special Investigation Team established to probe the case, police officials are still unsure if it was an accident or a murder.

Clearly, since the country rose in support of the December 16 gang rape victim and demanded greater safety for women, little has changed — be it with regard to policing standards at the ground level or society's overall attitude towards women. And proof of this lies not just in Assam but across the country where cases of women being violated, be it in the relative safety of their homes or among colleagues at work places or even in crowded public spaces, continue to happen with alarming frequency. In fact, even as the protests in lakhimpur continued, with Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi seeking to soothe frayed nerves to little effect, in Bihar a young athlete was sexually assaulted at the Jehanabad train station. After she protested against the lewd comments passed by a young man, a dozen others gathered, tackled her to the ground, beat her and attempted to strip her. All the while, a train station full of people did nothing to stop the miscreants or help the victim — they just stood and stared. Thankfully, in this case the victim is expected to survive the ordeal, but the incident only highlights how the rot runs deep in our society. landmark cases such as the Delhi gang rape may shock and shake our national conscience; they may even catalyse the state to take urgent action in the form of fast-track courts etc, introduce reform measures and pass new laws and guidelines. And while these are important steps, they will not take us the whole length unless there is large-scale social reform.