Ever since the country heard of the horrendous Sunday nightincident in which a 23-year-old paramedical student was gangraped in a movingbus in south Delhi, people have been expressing their angst in different ways.Political leaders, women’s rights activists, lawyers and the common man havereacted sharply to the incident, and the entire capital is once againdiscussing the pressing issue of women safety.
But is this for the first time that a rape has taken placein Delhi? Do we wait for such incidents to initiate a discussion and pitch fora stronger law that would act as a deterrent? Or is it the measure ofgruesomeness (in the present case) with which the act was done provokes us todebate and demand justice?
Rape incidents are not new for those of us living in thecapital. Some of the incidents that shook the capital were the rape of a 17-year-oldat Buddha Jayanti Park by president’s guards (2003); of a 22-year-old nurse bya ward boy at Shanti Mukund Hospital (2003); a Swiss diplomat’s rape (2003);and gangrape of a 30-year-old BPO staffer in an auto-rickshaw at Dhaula Kuan(2010). All these triggered immense rage among people in equal measure, only todie down subsequently.
What we should realise is, there could be many more rapes infuture in the absence of a deterrent.
India is a too big a county, and Delhi too vast a city, forthe men and women in khaki to be present everywhere. That is understandable.But what isn’t understandable is the total absence of the fear that policingmust bring about. As a result, Delhi’s underbelly is bolder than ever.
In case of rape, clamour for more stringent laws is seasonalnow. The intelligentsia, activists and the media wait for the next case. In theexisting system, a rapist perhaps knows that either he will never be caught orwill be set free after a short while. Under law, a rape convict spends sevenyears or a maximum of 10 years in jail. Sentencing, too, takes a fairly longtime, with the conviction rate abysmally low. And we are talking here of onlythe cases that are reported — for each such case there are many more thatremain unreported due to pressure or the fear of social stigma.
Setting up fast-track courts for the crime is a good optionto provide speedy justice in rape cases but, again, the shortage of judges andthe huge number of pending cases does make it a very viable, everyday option.Besides, the fact that a rapist would be free after a time might not be thestrong deterrent required.
A debate is now going on whether rapists should be awardedcapital punishment but that does not seem either politically or practicallyviable.
Another option, chemical castration of rapists, soundssomewhat convincing. Countries like the US, UK, Germany and Israel haveexperimented with surgical and chemical castration of convicted rapists. Theidea is that the offender must undergo a similar trauma that a victim does forthe rest of her life.
Chemical castration involves administration of a drug(anti-androgen) to reduce a person’s libido. For now, this seems a good way ofpunishing rapists without taking away their lives. Moreover, its cost — barelyRs 2,000 — is also much lesser than what it would take to feed and keep arapist for 7-10 years in prison.
And the chances of a convict committing rape again arereduced to as low as 3 percent against the 97-percent chance of a rapist doingit again after completing his jail term.
Wish we could spend moolah on development of a somewhatdiluted version of this chill pill to tame the testosterone levels ofmolesters. And for a repeat offender, the full dose!
Adity Srivastava is a chief sub editor at Governance Now
