It takes a certain kind of bravado for a rape victim to interview a rapist – and learn from him first hand, how unaffected the rapist remains – after having altered another human being’s life forever. Just reading the excerpts of Mukesh Singh’s interview seem so dangerous an act, filling you once again with renewed fear and loath.
“When being raped, she (the girl) shouldn’t fight back. She should just be silent and allow the rape.” Mukesh reasons their gang would have dropped Jyoti Singh off after ‘doing her’, and only hit the boy.
“A decent girl won’t roam around at nine o’clock at night. A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy”.
“Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes. About 20% of girls are good.”
“People have a right to teach them (bad girls) a lesson. The woman (Jyoti Singh) should have put up with it.”
British filmmaker Leslee Udwin’s documentary India’s Daughter interviewed Mukesh Singh, one of the convicts in the Nirbhaya rape case. The documentary is embroiled in a legal soup, as the information and broadcasting ministry has ordered television channels not to air the documentary. The restraining order says the documentary would create “ an atmosphere of fear and tension with the possibility of public outcry and law and order situation”. In an NDTV http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/ndtv-dialogues-on-the-nirbhaya-documentary-indias-daughter-full-transcript-744015 interview, Leslee justifies why it was important for Mukesh Singh’s thinking to be exposed.
Leslee felt that to get a meaningful answer to the question of why rapes happen, why men rape; she had to go to the source.
Leslee sat with rapists and asked them many questions about who the women in their lives were, what they thought of women, how should a good woman behave, and what makes a bad woman.
The rapists, who are languishing in jails for their crime, showed little remorse.
“Why we must face this (documentary) is because .. the attitude that I understood in these men is, what’s the big deal? Everyone’s doing it”– Leslee Udwin.
Mukesh is currently in Tihar Jail, Delhi and appealing against his death sentence. India’s Daughter was supposed to http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31698154 premier on BBC4 and NDTV on 8th March – International Women’s Day.
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