Society | Is outrage about sexual assault the flip side of indifference?

“Does he have to rape me for you to act?” asked the headline of a first-person account on the front page of Deccan Herald on December 5, exactly a week from the day the burnt body of a 26-year-old veterinary doctor was discovered on the outskirts of Hyderabad.

The young, Bengaluru-based journalist described a frightening experience with a stalker on her way home from work, both office and residence located in the city’s reasonably well-lit and busy Central Business District. Although it was just past 9 PM and lots of people were around, she wrote, they “saw everything but chose to remain quiet”, even when she finally shouted at the man who had been harassing her ever since she had left the Metro station.

On December 6, we woke up to the shocking news of the extrajudicial killing of all four men detained as prime suspects in the gang-rape and murder of the veterinarian. Equally, if not more, appalling was the enthusiastic approval and celebration of the summary executions without trial by a wide range of citizens, including individuals in supposedly responsible positions in Parliament and the police, institutions meant to make and enforce the law.

It is difficult to decide what was more alarming: The calls for public lynching when the men were first apprehended or the gleeful satisfaction expressed by many who felt ‘justice’ had been done by the elimination of the accused even before investigation was completed and charges filed. What is clear is that we will never know now whether those four men were guilty of the crime or the actual perpetrators are roaming free, posing even more of a threat now that they have managed to get away with such a heinous and widely-publicised crime.

On December 7 came the distressing news of the death of a 23-year-old survivor of multiple rapes, from Unnao in Uttar Pradesh, who had been set on fire by the two accused and their relatives on December 5. Hers was the second rape case from Unnao to make national headlines. The other woman was just 17 when she was allegedly raped by a politician in 2017, and she is still battling for life in a hospital in Delhi after a truck hit the car she was travelling in, killing her relatives and seriously injuring both her and her lawyer. It is hard to believe that this was just an accident, especially since her father was killed while in judicial custody in 2018.

Neither case generated the kind of parliamentary debate and public outcry that followed the crimes against ‘Disha’ in 2019 and ‘Nirbhaya’ in 2012, committed by lowly men. The district police has admitted that 51 cases of rape have been registered in Unnao over the past 11 months (other estimates range between 86 and 98). Parliamentarians and others who have been waxing eloquent about ‘justice’ over the past week will no doubt neither hear nor care about the other 50 (or more).

What the intense focus on a few cases out of the tens of thousands of other rapes across India every year (32,599 reported cases in 2017) obscures is that sexual assault is a pervasive and persistent pandemic that is not going to disappear thanks to the death penalty (included in the law) or ‘encounters’ (outside the law). What the jubilation over summary justice fails to acknowledge is that the wide prevalence and apparent inevitability of sexual violence — ranging from harassment to assault — takes a debilitating psychological toll, with most women seldom free of anxiety, if not fear, while going about their daily lives and work, especially (if illogically) at night or in unfamiliar, isolated places.

Even before the young woman from Unnao was buried, police in the village in which she was attacked reportedly told another woman attempting to file a complaint of attempted rape: "Rape toh hua nahi, jab hoga tab aana (Rape has not happened, come after it happens)”. That response is undeniably callous and disgraceful, but it recalls the indifference of passers-by in Bengaluru while a young journalist was being harassed in full public view. Bystander apathy is a major reason why harassment, and even assault, in public places continues to be so widespread. The indifference and negligence of employers who do not provide safe transportation after night shifts is another.

The public clamour for and official promises of measures to improve women’s safety will remain hot air unless there is more commitment all around towards zero tolerance for gender violence and to active intervention to deter harassment and prevent it from escalating into assault.

Ammu Joseph is a Bengaluru-based journalist and author of Making News: Women in Journalism. Views are personal.