CSRGURU
Promoting Child Rights Through CSR
New Delhi
Nov15-16,2019
Registrations End:
November 5,2019
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India, a Killer Country for the Girl Child
To end this vortex of violence against our daughters, the government and civil society need to work towards finding community supportive solutions and better policing.
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India was ranked the most dangerous country in the world for women in 2018 by the Thompson Reuters Foundation poll. If events over the last few weeks are anything to go by, India has become a killer country for the girl child – who is being raped and murdered across Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, often over petty family disputes.
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Take the case of the 12-year-old girl who, on June 7, was dragged out of her home in Kushinagar district in the Gorakhpur constituency by six men and allegedly raped. The suspects reportedly had an altercation with the girl’s family over the construction of a drain. The two main accused are on the run while the girl is undergoing treatment at a local hospital.
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The following day, on June 8, a ten-year-old girl was found dead at a cremation ground in Hamirpur in Uttar Pradesh. Her family has alleged that she had been raped before being murdered.In Jalaun district, adjacent to Kanpur, the naked body of a seven-year-old girl was found on June 9, fuelling suspicion that she too had been raped before being murdered. Here again, the father of the girl told the police that his daughter’s killing was the handiwork of his neighbours with whom he had had long standing differences.
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On Saturday, June 8, the abduction, rape and murder by strangulation of a ten-year-old girl living in a Bhopal slum created shock waves. Her body was found in a sewer and was apparently dumped there by a labourer who had received assistance from the girl’s father.
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In another case in Madhya Pradesh, a four-year-old girl in a village in Jabalpur was allegedly sexually assaulted by a 16-year-old boy. This happened on June 9. Pragya Thakur, the BJP MP from Bhopal, visited the victim’s home to extend her sympathies. As a representative of Bhopal in the Lok Sabha, Thakur would be well served to remember that Madhya Pradesh tops the graph for crimes against women. The National Crime Records Bureau statistics highlight that MP records the highest number of rape cases in the country and accounted for 4,882 rape cases in 2016. From these, 2,479 cases were rapes of minor girls.
The case of the three-year old girl in Tappal in Aligarh who was murdered and left in a garbage dump is also continuing to make headlines. She went missing on May 30 and her body was found on June 2. The post mortem examination confirmed death due to strangulation. The police have so far ruled out any sign of sexual assault, but the possibility is still under investigation. Again, this young child paid the price for a financial altercation between her family members and the accused over a loan of Rs 10,000.
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An attempt is being made to communalise this murder: Hundreds of young men reached the Tappal border on Sunday and Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Sadhvi Prachi was stopped from visiting Aligarh.
UP has witnessed a 400% rise in cases of child rape in 2016, according to NCRB data, which shows that while 20,000 children were raped in 2016, the figure stood at 10,934 in 2015. Many of these rapes have ended in the murder of the child victim.
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While India recorded an increase of 65% in rape cases from 2010 (22,172) to 2014 (36,735), Uttar Pradesh recorded an increase of 121% from 2010 (1,563) to 2014 (3,467), according to the NCRB data. Rapes by juvenile offenders increased from 1,688 in 2015 to 1,903 last year – almost a 13% jump.
The question that begs to be asked here is why the ‘stricter laws’ to curb sexual violence against women are not working.
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The new rape laws, issued in 2013, had mandated shorter trials and stricter punishment for rapists.
When asked about why so many rape cases are resulting in the murder of the victim, Dr Rajesh Kumar, head of the Society of Promotion of Youth and Masses, which works with juvenile delinquents and murderers in Tihar Jail, said: “When the rape law was being amended in 2013, I had pointed out the pitfalls of tightening the law. If the victim survives, she will be a witness. The rapist therefore finds it more convenient to eliminate the witness. For many of those who commit these crimes, there is little difference between living on the streets or spending time in a jail. ”
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The Law Needs to Act
Kumar also believes the time has come to ban access to child pornography. “The West has strict laws against access to child pornography. In Germany, you get a life sentence if you are caught viewing child pornography. The law needs to act on this front,” said Kumar.
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Rebecca John, a senior advocate at the Supreme Court, feels that these crimes point to a larger picture.
“The numbers of rapes are so large that we need to look beyond the immediate causes and go into deep rooted issues. There are high levels of unemployment, a huge amount of economic distress combined with the fact that India has the highest levels of mental health problems in the world. What has the state’s response been to these problems? Deafening silence. Increasing levels of punishment is not the answer,” John said.
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“Our society is imploding as happened to Sri Lanka earlier. Competitive democratic politics has created these divisions and this is leading to the destruction of the normative framework of our society. Unfortunately, we have a police force that collaborates with the majority community as they have been doing from 1947,” said political psychologist and social theorist Dr Ashish Nandy.
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But Jaipur-based woman activist Dr Renuka Pamecha believes there are other undercurrents which must be addressed. “During the 1970s, we approached the state government to set up Mahila Salaah Aur Suraksha Kendras in police stations where aggrieved women could receive immediate assistance.”
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“Imagine our horror when Vijaya Raje Scindia slashed the funding for this scheme, as she did for many other women-oriented initiatives. She showed no sensitivity towards their sufferings,” said Pamecha.
Similarly in Bhopal, local activists point out, while former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had launched a slew of pro-women schemes in his first term as chief minister, in his third term, the funding for pro-women schemes was substantially slashed.
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Communalisation of rape
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Few cases captured the imagination of the country as the Kathua rape case did where an eight-year-old girl was brutally gangraped and murdered in Kashmir. A special court on Monday convicted six of the seven accused; three have been sentenced to life imprisonment.
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Once again, the case was communalised so much that the Hindu Ekta Manch organised rallies in support of the accused. The extent of pressure being exerted on lawyers and the victims family can be gauged from the fact that the trial had to be shifted to another state.
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Attempts to communalise rape cases must be come to an end. More so, the government and civil society need to work towards finding community supportive solutions and better policing as two important steps to end this vortex of violence against our daughters.
Rashme Sehgal is an author and a freelance journalist based in Delhi.
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How India Can Get Better at Delivering Justice for Children
A large number of children suffer violence and neglect, yet only a handful of cases are reported.
The horrific murder of a two-year-old girl in Aligarh is animating conversations on social media, drawing rooms and streets for all the wrong reasons. Even though crimes against children have increased by nearly 500% over the past decade, the prevailing public discourse, instead of focusing on how to prevent the abuse of children, is on the identity of the accused and the victim.
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The reality is that this is not an isolated incident. Since it was reported, at least seven more incidents have been reported from towns across Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. The issue of violence against children is widespread, but public outrage is sporadic.
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A large number of children suffer violence and neglect, yet only a handful of cases are reported under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012. Statistics show that every 15 minutes, a child is sexually abused in India. A recent study found that the national conviction rate for child rape is 28.2% and pendency in these cases is at 89.6%. Data show that conviction rates remain as low as 10.2% and 6% in states like Jammu and Kashmir and Odisha respectively. Though the accused in the Kathua case have been convicted, it remains an exception to the despairing rate of conviction.
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According to media reports, in the Aligarh case as well, one of the accused is out on bail after having been charged for the rape of his own daughter. If he had been prosecuted efficiently, at least one child rapist would have been behind bars.
The use of death penalty
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In the last year, the Centre as some state governments have passed ordinances or enacted laws allowing capital punishment for rapists of girls below the age of 12 years. In the absence of data, it is hard to say if capital punishment is a good deterrent to prevent abuse of children. In general, it is widely accepted that the death penalty does not act as a deterrent. In fact, Section 6 of POCSO does have stringent punishment for rape of children, i.e. life imprisonment, but this provision is seldom used.
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To address the issue of violence and sexual abuse of children, it is important to look at the nature of sexual offences against children and examine the root causes. Underlying India’s rampant sexual violence is entrenched patriarchy that discriminates against girls and women and often encourages a toxic masculinity rather than sensitivity among boys.
In the light of this grim reality, what can be done to reduce violence against children?
A failing justice system, especially for the most vulnerable sections such as children, coupled with the absence of a functional child protection system with trained social workers worsens the situation.
Most judges also lack sensitivity, and children are often exposed to the accused or to aggressive questioning by defence lawyers. Unsurprisingly, this often leads to victims turning hostile. Special judges, separate courts and public prosecutors to conduct trials under the POCSO Act, monetary support to child victims, and a witness protection system are required to improve the conviction rates in cases of crimes against children. The best deterrent against crime is implementation of laws and certainty of punishment.
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Child protection system
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While strengthening the judicial system for speedy delivery of justice will create deterrence, it is equally important to have a functioning child protection system that will help prevent violence against children. The virtually non-functional Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS), must urgently be vitalised and invested in. Under this scheme, state, district and community-level child protection committees must be constituted with trained staff at the community level. Children can visit them if they feel unsafe, and the staff can ensure that action is taken to prevent and address incidences of violence.
Parents, children, and the community at large also need to be made aware of violence against children. It is important to integrate curriculum on personal safety education starting from Class I, or even anganwadis, in an age-appropriate manner. Discussions need to be held within resident associations and panchayats, and simple steps can help safeguard children.
Children constitute 40% of our population, yet only 4.52% percent of the total Union budget is allocated for them. Child protection is by far the lowest, at around 0.05% of the total Union Budget over the last four years. In 2017-18, the total allocation for the ICPS, which includes provisions under the POCSO Act, such as special courts as well homes for children, was Rs 725 crore for the entire country. This is woefully inadequate, given the sheer number of children who are in need of care and protection.
Violence against children is widespread, but our outrage is sporadic and catatonic. If we really are serious about protecting our children, something substantive that goes to the root causes needs to be done. As a society, we need to be vigilant about the safety of our children. The government must invest significantly more to ensure effective implementation of the POCSO Act, as well as ensure the strengthening of ICPS to include a trained cadre of professional staff for child protection as a vital step towards making India a safer place for all children.
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Shireen Vakil heads policy and advocacy at Tata Trusts. She has been working towards protection of children’s rights for over 20 years.