Rape- A problem with no solution

Delhi is currently India’s rape capital, 106 women are raped per day in our country. Delhi police claimed that 96 per cent of the women knew the accused.
According to the 2016 National Crime Records Bureau Data, which is also the latest, Delhi has consistently reported an increase in number of sexual crimes against women. 24,923 rape cases were reported across India in 2012. Most of us are aware of the ‘Nirbhaya’ case which took place in December 2012, where a young girl was beaten up and gang raped in Delhi. She died from her injuries thirteen days later, despite receiving treatment in India and Singapore. The incident generated international coverage and was condemned by the United Nations. In 2013, the Government amended our Criminal Law through an ordinance passed and added new offences into the code and also made a few changes in the existing law. Offences such as Acid Attack, Sexual Harassment, Voyeurism and Stalking were added. The offence rape was amended and given a broader meaning which was comprehensive enough to include any kind of penetration and also in any body part of the woman or girl. This was the most important change because earlier section 375 of the IPC only stipulated the Penile Vaginal penetration as rape. The fact that the new recommendations added that any penetration would be considered as rape was the most efficient tool in widening the ambit of the term rape. There was also the inclusion of registering complaints and medical examination. There was also an introduction of sexual harassment at workplace which is was of absolute necessity as employees earlier got harassed by their co-workers and office staff and did not have a specific backing of law for this. But even after the amendment and the addition of the new offences, have our mindsets changed? Orthodox and backward minds of the society still consider women as objects of desire and continue to exploit them on a daily basis, our lack of knowledge, respect and privacy for the womankind has always been the same. We need very stringent and harsh solution for this problem, we need an effective fast track procedure for the registration of rape cases and cause no unnecessary delay. We need to adopt a policy where we straight away sentence the accused to castration or execution, as rape constitutes as one of the most heinous offences of mankind. The Indian Supreme Court needs to constitute an efficient mechanism to provide justice to rape victims as soon as possible and pass a sentence within months and not years. In offences such as rape, there is no place for any humanitarian grounds or corrective justice, these ideologies are of no use for people accused of rape . India has reached a stage where the people are no longer afraid to commit offences, they are not scared of the law anymore, they feel they can get away with anything that they do. Our approach towards solving this issue needs to be pro-active and knowledge should be spread on subjects such as ethics, morality and etiquette. Our mentality has hit rock bottom because apart from respecting our own women we do not even leave the foreigners who visit our country, 53 Foreign tourists were raped in 2014-16 and just 1 person was convicted. Tourism dropped by 25% after the Nirbhaya case. It is time that we accept our state and start working towards improving ourselves. We consider ourselves as second to none yet do not respect our own women, we wish to be a world superpower yet keep on raping our tourists, we wish to protect our children yet 7200 minors are raped every year in our country, we wish to know the truth about everything yet 71% of rapes go unreported.