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Dual
Discrimination
While
women-related crimes in Uttar Pradesh soar, the official response is becoming
more and more tardy. A report by INDIA TODAY's Special Correpondent Subhash
Mishra.
On
August 24, Maya, the young wife of a rickshaw-puller, was dragged to a
police station in Kanpur where the policemen stripped her and beat her
up with lathis. Her offence: registering an fir against her husband for
allegedly stealing a rickshaw. The incident drew the attention of several
NGOs and political parties but their intervention hardly helped, with
the policemen insisting that it was a "routine" affair.
In a way the lawkeepers were not wrong. Women-related crimes in Uttar
Pradesh have seen a defintive increase in the past couple of years but
what is causing more concern is the sense of official indifference to
it. While cases of rape, molestation, dowry deaths, and mental and physical
torture occur throughout the country, Uttar Pradesh, along with Madhya
Pradesh has the distinction of topping the list. Of the 13 per cent rise
in atrocities against women in the past one year, these two states account
for nearly half.
"The main reason agai! nst the growing incidents of sexual crime
against owmen is that our society is sex-starved," analyses S.P.
Srivastava, IGP, crime, adding that boys from well-to-do families were
increasingly behind such incidents. Such admissions apart, the police
are doing precious little to tackle the situation. "I have ordered
the police to take up cases which create wide panic and fear such as eve-teasing
and molestation on a priority," says R.K. Bhatia, IG, Lucknow. But
that is certainly not enough.
That there has been a rise in the number of women who are actually registering
such cases is not much of a consolation. "We have nothing left now,"
says P.N. Srivastava, the father of one victim in Kanpur, speaking from
personal experience. His college-going daughter, Arti, is a wreck whose
face is a horrific contortion, thanks to burning acid that was splashed
at her by a youth. The case is nearly one-year old but justice eludes
the Srivastavas still. In fact, Abhinav Mishra, the prime a! ccused and
son of a senior state government officer, who was initially arrested following
tremendous public pressure, has managed to go away to the US to pursue
higher studies.
Significantly, sexual crimes against women are not limited to the big
cities. The trend is equally pervasive in the mofussil pockets. A newly
married girl, Rinky, was recently stabbed to death by her husband and
his friends in Muzaffarnagar after she refused to sleep with her husband's
friends. And Sanju, a 19-year-old girl, was beaten to death in Kushinagar
on the eastern fringes of the state when she spurned the advances of some
village youth.
Besides official apathy, the prevailing social order in these areas has
further perpretuated such shocking crimes. And the cases are getting more
and more perverse. In one incident in Barabanki, a young woman acused
of having illicit relations with her father-in-law was asked by the village
panchayat to prove her innocence by dipping her hands in boilin! g oil.
"If your hands get burnt then you are guilty," they told her.
Once the obvious happened, she was driven out of the village.
Catse conflicts also manifest themselves in horrendous sexual acts. Sia
Dulari, a backward caste resident of Bhawanipur village in Kanpur Dehat
paid with her life for not stopping her son from falling in love with
a Yadav girl. Allegedly held captive for a week by the village Yadavs,
she was repeatedly raped and on the seventh day, burnt to death with her
hands and legs tied up. The main accused, Om Narain Yadav, has not been
arrested till date. Confronted with the issue, all the local police say
is that the inquiry is no longer in their hands. The Yadavs had managed
to get the case transferred to the CID. Nothing, not even a film like
Lajja, which has a similiar stark storyline, it appears, can make a difference.
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