India’s continued demonization of rape victims

How should a country respond when its police force is found wanting? That is the question Indian’s face after a sting-operation carried out by a leading magazine last week exposed widespread rape-denial among a senior stratum of India’s police force. If the media reaction is an index, all that this revelation could muster was a nationwide raised eyebrow. In the embattled history for social justice in India the police dismissal of rape victims and the failure to respond marks one of the lowest points.

The sting carried out by Tehelka involved secretly filmed interviews with 30 Station Holders (SHOs), the policemen in charge of investigating rape claims, in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR). Delhi happens to be India’s “rape capital” and 17 of the 30 SHO’s in this area repeatedly insisted that the majority of rape claims they received were false. The approximations varied. “It’s consensual most of the time” was the insistence of one policeman. When asked to put a figure on the number of genuine rape complaints, another suggested 10%. Manoj Rawat, a sub-inspector in a nearby precinct, was less generous: “My personal view is that there are one or two per cent rape cases in [the] NCR”.

There is a tragic chain of causation that this attitude fails to break: without adequate investigations and in the absence of convictions, rapists go undeterred and more women come forward simply to reinforce police perceptions of false victimhood. The policemen can also be heard perpetuating all the retrograde myths about victim complicity. “No rape happens in Delhi without a woman’s provocation”: drinking, “indecent” clothing, flirtatious behaviour and, most absurdly, working with men are all things done by women to “induce” men into violating them.

If not inducement, women are busy profiting from the “rape industry”. According to one policeman, it is the women who come forward as victims that are to blame for turning rape into a profitable enterprise. Those that lodge complaints must be extortionists or short-changed escorts because “real” victims would be too constrained by their modesty to report a rape. By this absurd logic, it’s better to suffer in silence than face the indignity of seeking justice. Caste and class prejudices are also at play. One policeman is adamant that for poorer women, alleging rape is a  “source of income”. Another is certain that all victims from Nepal or Darjeeling are “sex-workers”.

The alarming disregard for the seriousness of rape was made clear last month during the Noida scandal, in which policemen responsible for investigating a complaint made public the identity and the address of a gang-rape victim. In a press conference the policemen went further, accusing the victim’s mother, as a divorcee cohabiting with a younger man, of setting a “wayward” example. The Indian penal code stipulates a two-year sentence for the illegal release of the personal details of rape victims and yet no police officer has been dismissed or charged. Apathy characterises the police’s rape prevention methods: following the Noida scandal, women in the NCR were told to stay indoors after 8pm and a curfew was duly imposed.

And yet, the most disheartening aspect of the exposé is the knowledge that these comments are the products of a much wider and much bleaker cultural attitude. In India, the suggestion that there is such a thing as marital rape is laughed at, and the high incidence of the rape of minors and the failure to report custodial rape all point to an institutional rape-denial complex. The immediate question is to ask, if this is the attitude of policemen in Delhi, a relatively progressive enclave, what is the experience of rape victims in India’s hinterland?

The stigmatisation of rape victims has a grave chilling effect on the number of reported incidents. Some figures suggest that 1 in every 50 rape case in India is reported. Of those, Delhi and the NCR have a conviction rate of just 30%. This problem is one compounded by the gaping disjuncture between law and order. Indian lawyers and activists complain that the problem is one of enforcement and the fact that rape-denial is a front-line issue is perhaps its most pernicious aspect: without the ability to adequately report rapes, women are denied recourse at the first instance.

The issue of rape-denial among India’s police force is also symptomatic of a structural problem: India’s police have long been a sort of vigilante force. Corruption is rife, custodial violence is common and policemen are rarely held to account. In this context, the dismissal of rape-victims becomes but one aspect of the police force’s indiscriminate hostility towards victims. The muted national response to the Tehelka investigation is therefore easily explained. Few, if any, retain faith in India’s police and with their reputation as a rogue force, pervasive rape denial becomes a relatively minor transgression.

Kiran Bedi, India’s Judge Judy and a celebrity policewoman, has come out insisting that a lack of training is the problem. She proposes “brainwashing” the police into taking rape seriously. Other senior figures have offered less risible solutions: have female police officers lead rape investigations or introduce quotas to encourage women to join the force. There are also those that argue that the police must not only be just, but be seen to be just and so dismissals are what are required to rebuild trust.

But each of these proposals falls far short. Just how much training is needed to purge these men of their age-old personal and professional prejudice? Critics are right to complain that training offers nothing by way of a guarantee that these policemen will have changed. Equally, India has an almost catastrophically low police to population ratio. Expunging a senior layer of police officials would only perpetuate the legal void in which rapists already act. And to argue that diversification is needed is to kick the issue into the long grass. Not only does rape-denial need to be addressed immediately, but, there is no reason to hope that the presence of policewomen will change anything: the one female police officer interviewed during the investigation parroted the same misogynistic views.

So how should a country respond when its police force is found wanting? Indians may have failed to react to the news of rape denial, but the pressing need for a viable solution is their cue to finally do something about it.

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• Farweasel

  Far too simple a summary of a very complex problem Inga.

  Yes blameless, wholly non-culpable women are raped and the perpetrators evade justice.  That’s as true as it is appalling.

  At the other end of the spectrum are women not raped who for a raft of reasons from personal inadequacies to the hope of extortion or revenge allege rape without any foundation.

  To accept uncritically the word of every complainant – which seems to be the logical extension of your argument – would lead to even worse injustice (look at Sweden and the non-too platable events stemming from fabricated evidence).

  And then to assert rape is as prevalent in the UK as India in the face of all the facts does no one any good whatsoever. 
  Bluntly – get off your soap-box, grow-up, argue with facts and you might help change minds.  Your kind of rant is self-defeating.

• OzPete66

  What do you expect from a country that worships cows and showers in cow urine.
  The world capital of obnoxious call centers staffed with people pretending to be someone else …. India wouldn’t have a clue about human rights …. and the water gives everyone diarrhea.

• turbodally

  “India’s continued demonization of rape victims”
  You think India demonises rape victims? You ain’t seen nothing yet! Head for the middle east and boy will you find competitors for compassionless morons.

  “Because if we are an evolution from animals, we have the “right” to behave like one”
  I think I know where you’re getting at here…A crow and a cat are both animals, yet they act distinctively different…Just as we humans, even though we’re animals, behave distinctively different from others…

• angela007700

   Indeed th Uk system has much room for improvement. However if international awareness and condemnation will force the Indian government to finally raise its head from the sands and at least attempt thru education and determined action to deal with the issues involved it will be a beginning. In the same way as any journey starts, with the first steps.

• JS7

  Your post is utter, total nonsense.  Firstly, law enforcement repeatedly report that false rape claims are very rare.  You are forgetting the fact that making a rape claim is an extremely risky situation for a woman, usually resulting in loss of job, friends, and/or family, if not retaliation. Of course, you have never known a rape victim or seen the results of a rape claim, or the thousands of women in psych hospitals and support groups because of the fallout of reporting their rapes, so you know nothing about this. 

  “worse injustice”…?  You think men are worth more than women? Here is some news for you:  a few years in prison, even unjustly, is NOTHING compared to the lifetime of horror and disability that a rape victim suffers.  Again, you know nothing about the effects of rape and do not want to know.

  “in the face of all the facts”…?  The facts, in fact, show an alarming prevalence of rape in the UK and an almost total lack of convictions (5-6%).  Those are among the few rapes that are actually reported and then prosecuted.  UK Defense barristers themselves have opined in well-known statements to the press that it is astonishing how reluctant juries are to convict even in the face of compelling evidence (blood, injuries, etc.). Our society is simply shot through with horrendous misogyny in the sexual and reproductive arena and the justice system is no match for it.  

  You are the one who needs to study up before launching another hateful and ignorant “rant” in the public sphere.  I suggest you visit a rape or child sexual abuse support group facilitator and find out just what is going on out there away from the little “male victims’” bubble that you insist on living in.