Rape is a horrendous immoral act which astonishes and degrades the human race and make humans equivalent to animals. A rape incident is condemnable in all respects. Earlier, state of Jammu and Kashmir was free from these heinous types of crimes but now rape incidents are reported from length and breadth of the state. Jammu and Kashmir is the lone state were mass rape incidents have been reported in past. The failures in booking the rape accused have led to occurrence and re-occurrence of such heinous crimes time and again. On May 18, 1990 security forces turned a women’s wedding into carnage when they first fired upon them and then gang raped bridegroom and her pregnant aunt for hours in south Kashmir. Kunan Pushpora mass rape incident is best known to everyone when females from twin villages were gang raped during the night by Indian Paramilitary forces. That incident has devastated the dreams of hundreds of lives. Even though, three decades have passed, courts have failed to convict the accusers. Kunan and Pushpora villages of Kupwara district of Kashmir valley were raided on February 23, 1991,by more than 300 personnel of the Indian army. As many as 150 girls and women were raped that night; nearly 200 men were tortured. Barns became torture chambers. The next morning, as one can well imagine, was marked by immense horror and paralyzing pain.
Asiya and Nilofar rape case Shopian traumatized the Kashmir valley and almost 40 days curfew was imposed by then Omar Abdullah’s led coalition government because of widespread public outrage. Here, accused were also security forces. Justice is elusive over all these years, as the Indian army has continued to exercise barbarism and has enjoyed complete impunity, thanks to the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). The controversial law lets Indian Army personnel enter any premise at any time in the Valley, without a search warrant, and use lethal force, if they deem it necessary. The government both at the centre and in the state habr continuously shirked responsibility for abuses at the hands of the Army. It will not be a mistake to say that the rape incidents were first introduced in Kashmir by security forces and were later acquitted free by so called judicial system of India. Had they been convicted, the incidents reported later would not have been happened. According to a 1993 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, the security forces use rape as a method of retaliation against Kashmiri civilians during reprisal attacks after militant ambushes. Most rape cases, according to the same report, have occurred during cordon-and-search operations. According to a 1996 HRW report, security personnel in Kashmir have used “rape as a counterinsurgency tactic”. The pattern of rape in Kashmir is that when soldiers enter civilian residences, they kill or evict the men before raping the women inside. Rape is an “essential element of the Indian military strategy in Kashmir.”
A study in 2005 by Medicines Sans Frontiers concluded that the rate of sexual violence against Kashmiri women was one of the highest among the world’s conflict zones, with 11.6% of respondents, out of a total 510 people in their survey, reporting personal experience of sexual abuse. Kathua, Unnao, Surat, Manipur, Delhi- the stretching list of gang rape cases across the nation has enraged people. Last time, something like this shook people’s conscience was in 2012, when Nirbhaya was brutally gang raped in a moving bus in Delhi. The sad part is nothing has changed, even after so many promises were made at that time. The Kathua rape victim was just 8-year-old, Surat victim was just 11, Manipur girl who was raped and then set on fire was also 11-year-old.
An eight-year-old innocent girl was brutally raped for days. She was sedated, tortured before finally killing her inside a temple. The nomadic girl had gone missing on January 10 and her body was recovered from the Rasana forest on January 17. Why was she raped? Well, according to the investigation, it came out that the innocent Bakherwal girl was raped and killed to make the nomads move out of the area in fear. Yes, just to make them leave Kathua. In western Islamic nations like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran, Dubai, etc., rape is a rarest of rare incident to be reported because there existed a Sharia Law which enforces fast trail of cases and accused is stoned to death within 24 hours. The punishment is very harsh and is a reason to restrict the people from these types of heinous acts. In democratic like India, here rape accusers are contesting Lok Sabha /Assembly elections and moving freely without any fear because of their acquittal with full dignity.
India had launched fast-track courts and a tougher rape law that included the death penalty after a gruesome assault on a student in a Delhi bus shocked the country in 2012, but crime statistics indicate the situation has got worse, not better, since then. But statistics show that since 2012, reported rape cases climbed 60% to around 40,000 in 2016, with child rape accounting for about 40%. The conviction rate of people arrested for rape remains stuck at around 25%. The backlog of rape cases pending trial stood at more than 133,000 by the end of 2016, up from about 100,000 in 2012, National Crime Records Bureau data showed. In each year during that period, about 85% of the total rape cases being heard remained pending. The Indian judicial system must improve the “timeliness and efficiency” of the legal process around rape, and cut the length of time between reporting and court proceedings, so that rape victims are not faced with years of additional trauma and uncertainty. Outdated laws are not the only barriers preventing women from seeking justice for rape. Widespread prejudice, victim blaming, credibility questioning, negative stereotypes and myths, often among the people responsible for enabling victims’ access to justice, must also be addressed. In fact there has to be a fast track trial system where accused could be booked within least possible time. Failure of justice delivery system in deciding the rape cases is the major reason of increasing rape incidents in the state. The rape cases must be trialed irrespective of age of the victim or accused and in all circumstances accused must be convicted with death sentence.
(The author is a freelancer. Views are exclusively his own [email protected] )
