It has happened again in Delhi. A five year old girl was raped and tortured. The rape of a child in a Delhi school caused a wave of indignation a couple of months ago. Now there has been this brutal demonstration of animality. There was a gang rape of a woman some time back. Physical torture makes these crimes unutterably gruesome. What the rapist got out of abusing a child beats the imagination. It was the worst kind of sadism. One may wonder why such a warped sense of values is repeatedly asserting itself in the capital. Can there be any other motivation behind it? The Prime Minister is merely deeply disturbed but Sonia Gandhi says that such crimes have to be severely dealt with as soon as possible. It is not just a question of Delhi getting a bad name. It is a total condemnation of the Indian mindset in some quarters.
The main issue is not just a statistical account of the rise in the rape rate. Rapes of minors and toddlers are becoming frequent. A four year old girl is battling death in Jabalpur. A 13 year old in Delhi tried to take her own life because the police decided to hush up her complaint of having been assaulted by eight men. Are the police human? Between 2001 and 2011, as many as 48, 386 children were raped according to the National Crime Record Bureau. But such statistics hide more than they reveal. Sonia Gandhi’s call for action raises a ray of hope. She means business. But punishment is subject to endless legal trappings. The judiciary is still debating whether or not minors should be tried for such heinous crimes. It is pathetic especially when little children fall victim to lust and the most depraved kind of perversion.
