A taste for domination is the major reason for rise of rape cases in India. Overall a change in the mindset is required to truly eradicate this menace from society
Increasing public concern over the rising incidence and savagery of rape cases is entirely warranted. Clearly, massive public agitation over the Nirbhaya case in December 2012, and consequent actions like the commendable changes in rape laws have led to little. The argument that much of the commotion has resulted from media coverage of a few cases is misleading. These deserved wide media projection given their horrific nature.
The recent case in which three men raped for hours a woman whom they had pulled into a car at Sohna, Haryana, and dumped in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, has rightly created a stir. The same applies to the incident in Manesar, in which a woman was raped inside an auto-rickshaw and her nine-month-old daughter, who was smothered and thrown out of the vehicle, killed — because the rapists thought that the infant’s crying might attract attention.
These two cases show that rapists prowl along public roads with impunity. The case in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr, in which, a mother and her teenage daughter were gang-raped in July last year after being pulled out of their car which had stopped after being hit by dacoits and the recent one in which four women were allegedly raped and one man was killed by dacoits in Jewar-Bulandshahr road in the same district, indicates ineffectiveness of the police in ensuring safety even along highways in which crime is frequent.
The above cases, as well as similar ones elsewhere, show that the country’s criminal justice system commands little fear and provides minimal deterrence. This is a matter of concern; so is the continuing steep rise in the incidence of rape cases, 34,651 of which were reported in the country in 2015. The numbers were 16,075 in 2001 and 24,923 in 2012. These numbers are of cases reported to the police which, as is widely known, account for a fraction of the numbers that actually occur.
As disturbing, the situation, in which, rape is primarily an urban crime and the rural areas, governed by traditional values, are relatively free from it, is changing. Of the 24,923 cases reported in 2012, only 3,035 occurred in the major cities. The trend continues. For example, while rape cases registered in Thiruvananthapuram city in 2016 numbered 66, the figure was 138 in rural areas around it. Ernakulam city reported 62 cases while the adjoining rural areas reported 112. The figures for Thrissur city and the surrounding rural areas were 46 and 103 cases respectively.
Worse, conviction rates are low and falling. These were 44.3 and 37.7 per cent in 1973 and 1983 respectively, 26.9 percent in 2009; and 24.2 per cent and 27.1 per cent in 2012 and 2013, respectively. The causes of the increase in the number of rapes, of only a fraction of these being reported, as well as of the low conviction rates, need probing — beginning with the last because it conduces to the rise in the incidence of rapes by undermining the fear of punishment.
The causes of low conviction rates include incompetent and half-hearted police investigation, poor prosecution, inability of the traumatised victims to stand up to ruthless and embarrassing cross examination by sharp criminal lawyers, indifference on the part of judges, victims succumbing to pressures for coming to a compromise with rapists, delays by forensic science laboratories in submitting medical reports which slow down the progress of the cases and undermines the determination of the victims to press ahead with their complaints and in a few cases the faulty nature of the reports.
These causes have been mentioned too often to require exhaustive treatment here. Similarly, one needs to mention briefly most of the commonly cited reasons for a large number of cases going unreported. One is the stigma attached to rape. The victim is considered to have become ‘impure’, which in turn makes it difficult for her to marry or live normally in the family if she is married. This leads to a tendency to conceal rapes, particularly given low conviction rates, the humiliation of registering complaints with unsympathetic authorities and subjection to prolonged and gruelling court proceedings.
Intimidation by rapists when they are notorious criminals or powerful people and the victims are poor and vulnerable is often a deterrent. The fact, that in an overwhelmingly majority of cases the rapist is known the victim, sometimes puts the latter under pressure not to press charges, especially when the culprit is a relative. The percentage of such instances to the total has come down from an earlier 94 to 86.
Even then, their magnitude is clear from the fact that according to the National Crime Records Bureau in 33,098 of the 34,651 rape cases reported in India in 2015 the offenders were known to the victims.
Finally, a major deterrent is the police’s unwillingness to record cases which, applicable to all instances, is more pronounced in the case of rape because of lack of sympathy for victims, influence of the powerful over them and, of course, bribery.
As indicated earlier, failure of the criminal justice system to deliver, contributes significantly to the growing incidence of rapes. There are also well-known societal causes — commoditification of women through their projection in advertisements, growing presence of women in public spaces which enhances opportunities for crimes against them and increasing assertion by women of their entirely justified right to move and dress as they want to. A basic cause, however, has escaped adequate attention. Rape is a result of sadism. As Erich Fromm points out in Escape from Freedom, sadism, involves domination, which can be physical in the form of forcible sex and torture or mental and psychic like control over decision-making.
He says that a feeling of insecurity grips one as one grows out of the sense of security engulfing one as an infant who is a part of his mother’s world and becomes an adult increasingly facing the insecurities of the world. Sadistic domination is an attempt to overcome the feeling of insecurity through the acquisition of power over others. Rape gives one a total and savage sense of power.
Insecurities increase as societies become more developed and complex. Growing physical insecurity in the form of vulnerability to crimes, accidents, riots and civic commotions are compounded by economic insecurities ranging from the danger of unemployment, loss of returns from investments during recessions and psychological ones like fear of failure in relationships, not succeeding well enough in life compared to others, and just the feeling of insignificance in megapolises with their tall buildings and impersonal lives.
These circumstances are a feature of modern life and will not disappear. Hence, the importance of enhancing the effectiveness of the criminal justice system. The incidence of rapes will continue to increase as long as this is not done.
(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)