Delhi Rapist: Girl Was Responsible for Her Death
By Rakesh Raman
Mukesh Singh, one of the convicted men in the 2012 gang rape in a moving bus in Delhi, has blamed the 23-year-old victim for her death.
Recounting the rape incident, Singh said that the girl shouldn’t have fought back and should have allowed the rape to happen silently to avoid murder.
In an interview from jail for a BBC documentary, Singh said women who go out at night have only themselves to blame if they attract the attention of gangs of male molesters. “A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy,” he said.
The interview, which BBC Four will air on its Storyville programme, will coincide with International Womens’ Day this Sunday.
According to The Telegraph, Singh’s victim was returning from an evening at the cinema with a male friend when the six-strong gang offered them a lift in a mini-bus they were driving. She was raped and frenziedly beaten with iron bars, prompting widespread demonstrations for Indian women to have greater protection from sexual violence.
Singh, who has appealed against his death sentence, says that executing him and the other convicted rapists will endanger future rape victims, as the rapists will tend to kill the victim instead of being caught by the victims’ complaint.
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Singh was driving the bus in which the rape took place. “You can’t clap with one hand – it takes two hands,” he said in the interview, according to The Telegraph. “A decent girl won’t roam around at 9 o’clock at night. A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy. Boy and girl are not equal. Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes. About 20 per cent of girls are good.”
According to The Telegraph article, the lawyers who defended the gang in court expressed similarly extreme views about women who venture out at night.
In a previous televised interview, The Telegraph says, lawyer AP Singh said: “If my daughter or sister engaged in pre-marital activities and disgraced herself and allowed herself to lose face and character by doing such things, I would most certainly take this sort of sister or daughter to my farmhouse, and in front of my entire family, I would put petrol on her and set her alight.”
Why Rapes Happen in India
The number of rape cases in India’s capital Delhi had almost doubled in a year after the gang rape and murder of the girl in Delhi bus.
According to government figures, there were 1,330 rapes in Delhi in the first 10 months of 2013 as compared with 706 for the whole of 2012, The Telegraph reported.
It’s not only in Delhi, but the rape cases are increasing all over the country and now India is among the top 10 countries of the world in terms of number of rapes.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau, 24,923 rape cases were reported across India in 2012. But the number will be much higher, as most cases are not reported to the police by rape victims. Estimates suggest that a new case of rape is reported every 22 minutes in India.
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Like the Delhi rapist and his lawyer said, most believe that the so-called modern culture or Westoxication of women is the main cause for rapes in India. Women in India are living with a totally confused mindset and want to enjoy only “physical” freedom without any intellectual discipline that would allow them to focus on their work instead of roaming around aimlessly in skimpy dresses.
Plus, the governments as well as civil society groups, which claim to be working to safeguard women’s interests, are not serious at all. While governments focus on penalty for the rapists, common people waste candles in utterly useless candle campaigns. But rapes are increasing fast in the country.
Nobody has seriously tried to know the root cause of rapes and addressed that cause. Rape, in fact, is a factor of sexual desire which is a human need like water, oxygen, or food. As a hungry man who can’t afford food will steal it, there is a probability that a man will rape if not satisfied sexually.
You need to address this basic human need. The debates should be on the cause and prevention of rapes instead of punishment for the rapists. And there are many ways to address this human need.
Although the rapes will not totally stop by taking the humanitarian steps, there is a great likelihood that the number of rape cases will come down.
By Rakesh Raman, the managing editor of RMN Company
You also can read: More Articles by the RMN Editor, Rakesh Raman
Photo courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
