Death for rape
CM Chouhan's one more gimmick !
N D Sharma
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan : poor track record !
When the illegal
sand mining
became a hot
topic following
attacks by mining
mafia on some
government employees trying to
check the racket, Chief Minister
Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced
his determination to cleanse the
river Narmada and launched his
Narmada Seva Yatra without spelling
out how he planned to stop the flow
of over 200 sewerage drains into the
river.
Launched on December 11 last,
the Narmada Seva Yatra is a grand
'success' as it has diverted public
attention not only from illegal sand
mining but from many other similar
things also.
When there was a spurt of reports
about rape incidents in the State, the
Chief Minister thundered that the
perpetrator of such a heinous crime
deserved to be hanged. He did not
stop there but announced that his
government would bring a bill in the
monsoon session of the Assembly to
amend the relevant section of the
Indian Penal Code (IPC) for awarding
death sentence to the rapist.
To convince the public about
seriousness of his intention, he
added that after the amendment bill
was passed by the Assembly, it
would be sent 'to the Centre and the
President' (for the President's assent).
'Death to the rapist' has been a
favourite slogan of many BJP leaders
in Madhya Pradesh which has for
many years been enjoying the
dubious distinction of recording the
highest number of rape cases in the
country.
According to the National Crime
Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics, as
many as 4391 rape cases were
recorded in the State in 2015. In the
following year, the number went up
to 4527, according to a reply given by
Home Minister Bhupendra Singh to a
question of a Congress member in
the budget session of the Assembly.
Of these 13 women were killed after
they were raped and another 14
committed suicide, the minister
added.
The Assembly was further
informed that on an average 11
women were raped every day while six women were gang-raped every
week in the last one year. In a candid
admission in an interview to a
magazine, the MP Home Minister
said that the number of registered
rape cases in Madhya Pradesh did
not reflect the true picture of the
incidents of the crime; in many cases
the victims either did not come
forward to lodge the complaint or
changed their statements in court or
retracted the allegations.
Chouhan's proposed law for
awarding death sentence to rapist is
as much a gimmick as his Narmada
Seva Yatra. The problem is not the
lack of sufficient penal provision in
the law. The IPC stipulates from
seven years' rigorous imprisonment
to life sentence to a rape convict. The
problem is of ensuring conviction in
which Madhya Pradesh has a poor
record of mere 20 per cent
conviction rate. Besides, the police force in Madhya Pradesh has been
converted by Chouhan into his own
personal sena and has virtually lost
aptitude and interest in taking the
people's grievances seriously.
Here are a few examples: some
time back, a young pregnant Bhil
(tribal) woman of Dhand village in
Guna district was raped by some
youths belonging to the Meena
community of Konyakalan village.
Next day the family members of the
victim went to Chachaura police
station to lodge the complaint but
the police shooed them away as the
Meenas in the region are politically
and financially influential people.
It
was only at the persistence of the
Bhils, who have a substantial
population in the area, that the
police condescended to register the
complaint four days later.
Two
Meena youths were named in the
FIR, though subsequent reports said
that the hapless woman was raped
by four persons.
The police made no attempt to
arrest the alleged rapists even after
registering the FIR, spreading unrest
among the Bhils. After waiting for
over two weeks, the Bhils held their
Mahapanchayat on the banks of a
pond near Dhand in which about
5000 tribals were said to have been
present. Then they marched en
masse to the police station and shot
arrows at the police killing an
inspector. In the subsequent police
firing a Bhil was also killed.
Significantly, the tribals wanted
justice and not revenge. With their
numbers and the alacrity with which
they had moved, they were in a
position to take on the Meena family.
The Bhil Mahapanchayat had
ordained that they were not to go to
Konyakalan village.
Their ire was
directed at the police which was
supposed to ensure justice to the
aggrieved family and punishment to
the perpetrators of the crime.
The police officers of the district
tried to spread the myth that the
Bhils were going to attack the
Meenas and that the police inspector
was killed while trying to prevent the clash between the two communities.
The police could not find many
takers for their blatant falsehood.
And what did Chief Minister
Chauhan do? He went to the house
of the slain police inspector to
console the bereaved family and
promised a job in the police
department to his son. Nothing
particularly bad in that. He, however,
did not stop there. He declared the
slain police inspector a 'martyr'. He
had nothing to say about the grievances of the tribals and the
despicable role of the police.
Chouhan's proposed law
for awarding death
sentence to rapist is as
much a gimmick as his
Narmada Seva Yatra. The
problem is not the lack
of sufficient penal
provision in the law. The
IPC stipulates from
seven years' rigorous
imprisonment to life
sentence to a rape
convict. The problem is
of ensuring conviction in
which Madhya Pradesh
has a poor record of
mere 20 per cent
conviction rate.
A little later, as the Chief Minister
was indulging in his periodic fetish of
signing MoUs worth lakhs of crores
of rupees in an extravaganza
organised with the public money at
Khajuraho, not far from there a
teenaged girl belonging to a poor
farmer family was raped and burnt
alive. The police did not only refuse
to register their complaint but sided
with the perpetrators of the
horrendous crime.
Vasundhara, of Magdupura village
under Tejpur police station in
Damoh district, was a student of the
12th class; she had stood first in the eleventh standard in the entire
tehsil. One evening, just as the
extravaganza was being laid out at
Khajuraho not far from the village,
Nonelal Patel and his wife
accompanied their daughter
Vasundhara to the police station
where the girl narrated amidst sobs
how Saurabh Patel, a neighbour, had
dragged her to a secluded place and
raped her. Vasundhara's mother had
even brought the clothes her
daughter was wearing at the time of
the incident.
The police were said to have
questioned Vasundhara and her
parents for over two hours. After
that they registered a case under
Sections 354 (assault on woman with
intent to outrage her modesty) and
323 (voluntarily causing hurt). There
was no mention of rape in police
report. Nonelal Patel was asked to
come to the police station the
following day.
Next day Nonelal carried with the
help of his brother and others the
half-burnt body of his daughter to
the police station and presented it to
the in-charge of the police station.
Vasundhara, still struggling for life,
told the police officer that this
morning as she was lying down in
her grand-mother's room, Saurabh
Patel came with three of his family
members; they poured kerosene on
her, set her afire and hurriedly made
their escape.
Saurabh was shouting, according
to Vasundhara's statement, that he
wanted to see how she would go to
the police now. Vasundhara's shrieks
had attracted her father and others
who doused the fire and took her to
the police station. Vasundhara later
died in the hospital.
A 40-year tribal woman of Khajri
Dhana village in Betul district walked
all the way to the district
headquarters to complain to the
Collector that the Sarpanch of the
village and four others had raped
her a few days back and had been
harassing her continuously since. As
the Collector had no time, she was
asked to take her complaint to the
If Chouhan carries out his
ill-conceived threat of
amending the law to
provide for death sentence
to rapist, it is likely to
result in killing of more
women after rape so that
there is little evidence left.
Chouhan's police will be
only too happy. Who cares
if the rate of conviction
falls further!
lesser luminaries of the district
administration where again she was
treated shabbily. In sheer
frustration, she consumed some
poisonous stuff. However, before
she could consume the entire stuff,
the bottle was snatched by some
people and she was thus saved.
In another incident in Betul
district itself, a Dalit rape victim (who
was a village panchayat member)
had taken her life in front of the
Collector's office after fighting for
justice for six years. In her
dying declaration, the victim had
claimed that she was ending her
life as nobody had acted on her complaints while her rapists
had continued to harass her.
Another rape victim in Satna
district in yet another part of the
State, harassed by the perpetrators
of the crime and the police alike, also
tried to commit suicide. Such
instances are legion.
If Chief Minister Chouhan carries
out his ill-conceived threat of
amending the law to provide for
death sentence to rapist, it is likely to
result in killing of more women after
rape so that there is little evidence
left. Chouhan's police will be only too
happy. Who cares if the rate of
conviction falls further!