rape

India, we have a rape problem. What are we doing about it?

Fill in the blanks:
Why was she wearing ____ ?
Who told her to go to _____ ?
Wasn’t she being too adventurous in ____?

The latest horror story out of Jharkhand has inflamed social media—not so much because of the violence of the crime, but because the woman is a foreign national who has spoken about her ordeal on a now deleted Instagram post, her bruised and battered face for all the world to see.

Here’s what happened. On the night of March 1, the woman travelling on a Spanish passport along with her husband, was attacked in Dumka, Jharkhand. According to the first information report (FIR), the woman has said she was gang-raped by seven men (at the time of writing all seven have been arrested along with one more) and her partner was beaten, assaulted and robbed. They were found by a night police patrol and taken to a hospital where the woman told the doctors she had been raped.

India, we have a rape problem. What are we doing about it? Read More »

Laws by public emotion

In response to public outrage against a spate of reported rapes of children, the government has now brought in an ordinance that imposes death to anyone convicted of raping a girl below 11. Why I think this ordinance won’t work, and what I think will. The remarkable fact about recent Indian law-making, particularly when it

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No country for women

In Hindustan Times: Recent gang-rapes and our reaction to them tell us how far we’ve descended in six years after Nirbhaya. When we allowed our anger to spill over into the streets following the December 2012 gang-rape of a physiotherapy student, we didn’t ask about her religion. We didn’t put labels on our fellow protesters’

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Over-indulgent parents and brand-conscious schools are failing our kids

There’s a sickness infecting some of our boys caused by a toxic combination of over-indulgent parents, schools obsessed with ‘brand image’ and the normalising of sex and violence by mass media. On Instagram, the seventh-grader threatens to have his teacher and her daughter raped. The eighth-grader emails two of his ‘very hot’ teachers and invites

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Why Preity-Ness case isn’t a mere ‘tiff’

Where does the trajectory of violence begin? Perhaps it begins by grabbing someone’s arm. Perhaps it begins with a slap. Today’s stalking becomes tomorrow’s acid attack. Today’s groping becomes rape. Two common friends emerge key witnesses. Given the identity of the people involved — a former actor, a high-profile businessman and both co-owners of a

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No going back from here

So what changes now? Now that four convicts in the Delhi gang rape case have been sentenced to death will your daughter be able to take a bus from a late evening film show without worrying about making it safely home? So what changes now? Now that four convicts in the Delhi gang-rape case have

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