Safe havens no more: On growing crime against women  

From Odisha to Karnataka, Bengal to Delhi, violence against women has seen an ominous rise over the past few months. What is even more appalling is that crimes are being committed in spaces such as school and college campuses or workplaces which are usually presumed to be safe havens. On July 14, a 20-year-old student of Fakir Mohan Autonomous College, Balasore, passed away after suffering 90% burns in an immolation bid. The B.Ed student had taken the extreme step outside the principal’s office after her repeated complaints of sexual harassment, against a senior teacher, went unheard. The accused teacher, Samir Sahu, and the principal, Dillip Ghosh, have been arrested, but a precious life would not have been lost had her grievances been redressed in time. She ran from pillar to post, taking it right up to the Chief Minister’s office, but no one paid attention to her grave complaint. In Bengal, even before a year has passed since a post-graduate student’s brutal killing at R.G. Kar Medical Hospital in 2024, a law college student was gang-raped on campus this June; in Mangaluru, two lecturers have been arrested for the alleged rape of a student; in Delhi, a nine-year-old girl’s rape and murder led to the Opposition crying foul over the collapse of law and order.

Little seems to have changed on the ground after Nirbhaya’s rape and murder in Delhi in 2012. Stringent laws are in place, but to what effect? The Odisha student’s plight has put the spotlight on Internal Complaint Committees, mandatory under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013. The Odisha government asked all colleges to form the committees within 24 hours, after the tragic death. Questions should be raised about the manner in which the system failed the student, and the absolute lack of accountability. The annual ‘Crime in India’ report by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) for the year 2023 is yet to be released. Figures available for 2022 show that a total of 4,45,256 cases of ‘crimes against women’ were registered, showing an increase of 4% over 2021. While the majority of crimes against women were registered under ‘cruelty by husband or his relatives’ (31.4%), ‘assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty’ comprised 18.7% of all crimes, and ‘rape’ was pegged at 7.1%. It must be noted that many crimes go unreported as well. In this backdrop, conversations about sexual violence and gender are imperative, and must start early. The clamour for justice against a crime should not die down after a few days either, especially when protectors turn predators.