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April 21st, 2013 
Peter Nolan
Sushma Swaraj, parliamentary leader of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata
Party, who visited ‘Gubiya’ at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences
(AIIMS) on Saturday said while she was there doctors took her to meet the
second unidentified five year old rape victim, and disclosed they had
recently treated other young victims too.
These two latest rape cases have revived the intense debate and national
introspection over the scale of rapes and sexual assaults in the country
which began in December after a 23 year old student was gang-raped and
battered by six men on a bus as she returned from a cinema at a popular
Delhi shopping mall with a male friend. She died two weeks later from
chronic internal injuries.
There were protests on Sunday at Delhi Gate, close to the India’s president’s
official residence, amid a heavy police presence, and demonstrations at
Nehru Park and other places in the city.
Mrs Swaraj said she had believed the national debate that case had caused
would lead to rapid improvements in public safety for women, but Indian
women were now more at risk than before. “I had thought that after
Damini case thinking will change. Unfortunately, the situation has worsened,”
she said.
Human rights campaigners said there had been a 336 per cent increased in child
rapes in India since 2001, from 2,113 cases to 7,112 in 2011. They warned
that even this increase is likely to be an underestimate because only a
minority of cases are reported to the police.
Mrs Swaraj said child rapists should face the death penalty. “I saw
another five year old girl child in the next room. She is also a rape
victim. She was found abandoned in the AIIMS Campus. She says her father is
a Rickshaw puller. She misses her mother but does not want to go home.
“Doctors told me that only few days back, they discharged a male child
who was a victim of sodomy. I think we should hang these criminals and save
our children,” she said.
A 13-year-old girl who was gang-raped in Rajasthan last August is also
undergoing a series of operations at the hospital to reconstruct her
internal organs.
Police have since arrested a 22-year-old man in Bihar for the kidnap and rape
of ‘Gubiya’. He had been working as a casual labourer in Delhi.
Vrinda Grover, a leading lawyer and women’s campaigner said statements by
politicians and token gestures by the government would be meaningless unless
Indian society looked inward to find out the causes of violence against
women and young girls.
“We don’t need expression of sorrow from the political class but action.
The situation is grim, children, adults, aged women all are targeted with
absolute impunity. By suspending a policeman cannot resolve the issue, we
have given enough leverage to the police, now its time to take action
against the rotten lot. It’s high time for the Indian society to admit that
we are violent society. Time for us to introspect and look for correction,”
she said.
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