NEW DEHLI (India) – Rejecting a request from India not to broadcast the documentary by British filmmaker Leslee Udwin on the December 2012 Delhi gang-rape, the BBC aired it in the early hours of Thursday.
With Home Minister Rajnath Singh said he was “stunned and deeply hurt” when he heard about the controversial interview of one of the convictst, there is something more that might leave him speechless.
As per reports in Hindustan Times, over 18,000 men charged with rape were set free by courts across India due to lack of evidence in the 12 months after the paramedical student gang-rape on December 16 2012 in Delhi.
The National Crime Records Bureau shows only 6,892 of the 25,386 cases were guilty by the court in 2013 and the rest of 18,494 men charge-sheeted and tried for rape are back on the streets.
In 2013, more than 33,000 women reported they were raped. That is nearly 90 women raped every day.
“The scandal is not that someone accused of rape was interviewed. The scandal is that in the two years after the gang-rape, women are as unsafe as they were in December 2012,” said Ajai Sahni, head of Delhi-based security think-tank, Institute for Conflict Management.
“No one seems really concerned about the nuts and bolt of the legal process. Ensuring that the guilty are brought to justice, and punished,” added Sahni.
Police officers have argued that the executive – politicians and civil servants alike – hardly ever concentrate on this aspect as it required too much money, and effort.
“The interview is essentially a footnote to the scandal of state failure,” Sahni said, calling the response to the gang-rape and the interview as pretentiousness by politicians, activists and sections of the media.
India may claim to have steping forward but when it comes to women safety, things remains the same.
