advertisement
The number of rapes reported each year in Delhi has more than tripled over the last five years, registering an increase of 277 percent from 572 in 2011 to 2,155 in 2016, according to data released recently by the Delhi Police.
The year after the Nirbhaya incident – in which a 23-year-old paramedical student was raped by a group of men in a moving bus in Delhi on 16 December 2012 – saw a 132 percent spike in the number of cases reported, with a sustained 32 percent increase thereafter, from 1,636 cases in 2013 to 2,155 in 2016.
Cases pertaining to “assault on a woman with intent to outrage her modesty” (under Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code) have increased by 473 percent from 727 in 2012 to 4,165 in 2016.
Government initiatives to ensure the safety of women – such as this National Vehicle Security and Tracking System and setting up of women’s helplines – have failed to effect a measurable drop in the number of reports of rape and other sex-related crimes.
At the same time, funds allocated for improving safety of women in public transport have been underutilised for years on end, as this ministerial reply in the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) indicates.
The first five months of 2017 saw 836 rape cases being reported to the police.
The figure does not quite capture the continuing horror that women in the National
Capital Region (NCR) face. In the 48 hours from 19 June 2017, for instance, five rape incidents were recorded. In addition to these, a 24-year-old woman was raped in a car parked outside a mall in Delhi on 20 June 2017, and another in which a 26-year-old woman was gangraped in a moving car on the outskirts of Delhi.
The other most commonly reported crimes against women in Delhi are cruelty by the husband and the in-laws, kidnapping, and “insult to the modesty of women”.
“Insult to modesty of women” covers sexually-motivated comments or gestures in a place of work, on public transport, and so on.
The number of rapes reported each year in Delhi, as we said, rose 277 percent from 572 in 2011 to 2,155 in 2016, according to Delhi Police data.
The rise in the number of cases does not necessarily imply an increase in the number of rapes; it can mean greater willingness on the part of survivors to approach the authorities, as well as a greater propensity among police officials to register complaints.
One government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IndiaSpend that the rise in the number of reported rapes is due to advisories issued by the government and the Supreme Court of India that action would be taken against police personnel who fail to register a First Information Report (FIR) for rape and other cognisable offences.
Anant Kumar Asthana, a Delhi-based activist and lawyer, agreed.
The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, obligates citizens to lodge complaints of sexual offences against children.
The Criminal Law Amendment Act, popularly known as the Nirbhaya Act, came into force on 2 April 2013, and inserted a provision in the Code of Criminal Procedure to make it mandatory for criminal complaints of a sexual nature to be recorded by women police officers, and prescribes rigorous imprisonment of between six months and two years in addition to a monetary penalty for a public servant who fails to register a complaint of a cognisable offence.
Preethi Pinto works as a Program Coordinator on Violence against Women and Children at Mumbai-based SNEHA (Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action) told IndiaSpend.
Only 50 percent of all crimes are reported, and only half of these are registered as FIRs, a 2015 public survey entitled ‘Crime Victimisation and Safety Perception’ conducted by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) among households in Delhi and Mumbai, found.
CHRI estimated that one in 13 cases of sexual harassment were reported in Delhi.
Meanwhile, the conviction rate for rape in Delhi, though better than the all-India average (see Table 2), dipped to 29.7 percent in 2015, the latest year for which data are available from theNational Crime Records Bureau.
Across India, one in four rape trials leads to conviction, as IndiaSpend reported on March 9, 2015.
After the Nirbhaya incident, the Delhi Police set up 161 help-desks staffed by female officers, and announced that 70 percent of female officers would report for over eight-hour shifts each day, according to 2014 Bureau of Police Research and Development study on national police working conditions. However, those who deal with these help-desks question their competence, IndiaSpend reported on 12 August 2016.
In 2013, the Ministry of Finance announced it would set up a Rs 1,000-crore ($156 million) Nirbhaya Fund to drive initiatives aimed at enhancing the safety of women in the country.
The Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) has initiated three schemes
under the Nirbhaya Fund – One Stop Centre (OSC) for women affected by violence, under which 84 centres are currently operational; Universalization of Women Helpline, under which 18 states and UTs have set up helplines; and Mahila Police Volunteer (MPV), whose pilots are currently running in several states.
In a 26 May 2016, order, the Supreme Court asked the Centre to formulate a national policy for providing relief to rape survivors, saying the Nirbhaya Fund amounted to “just paying a lip service”.
Despite the initiatives under Nirbhaya Fund, crime against women continues unabated, amicus curiae and senior advocate Indira Jaising told the Supreme Court, The Hindu reported on 7 February 2017.
Crime statistics from Delhi support this contention. Yet, laws and policing alone
cannot prevent crimes of a sexual nature.
Pinto emphasised the need to change societal attitudes by instilling healthy notions of gender equality and masculinity among children, and removing unhealthy underpinnings of patriarchal biases among adults.
This can only happen when “violence against women and girls is not considered a private matter, but a public problem, with societies, public and living spaces are designed and developed for women and children as much as for men,” Pinto added.
(This article was first published on IndiaSpend and has been republished with permission. Chaitanya Mallapur is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)