Skip to main content

Dealing with Rape

Image
By

The recent death of 2 victims of rape that the media highlighted is a gruesome reminder of how pitiably inadequate our state of preparedness is for dealing with this hazard to health and life.

I am told that the reason why crime rates in Singapore are one of the lowest in the world is because people there are scared to commit them. What deters potential criminals is a high chance of being nabbed (good policing) , that no amount of phone calls can prevent or reverse. Further, the punishment for crime is strict and harsh.

What happens in India is quite the opposite. Most rapists feel confident of getting away. The girl, they feel, would be so shocked, “stigmatized” or perhaps even dead that she and her family would probably not dare to complain. The culprits of the Delhi gang-rape case in which 6 criminals assaulted a 23 year old in a bus probably thought that way!

What deters a victim further is the lack of grooming of the hospital and police staff to attend to a victim’s complaint in a supportive reassuring manner, that helps her regain her bruised dignity and confidence. Then comes the need for timely and quick action by law enforcers who are not only required to catch the culprits, but ensure adequate protection to the victim and her family. 

This was the tragic saga of the 17 year old in Patiala, who despite physically surviving a gang-rape, had the courage to speak out and complain. But why did the law enforcers and society betray her instead of supporting and protecting her, that pushed her to take the final drastic step in utter frustration and end her life.? Obviously “unequal justice”! The culprits were smug that “someone” will protect them!

Last, but not the least, is how we protect girls from such criminals. In the aftermath of these torrid events several politicians have tried to touch the common cord by stating they have daughters too. The grim reality is that the daughters who got raped belonged to vulnerable sections of society, had no cars, contacts or powerful fathers, and could but rely only on what the society and the “system” had to offer.  And we saw what they got!

While we are still trying to come to terms with the horrific tragedy, legal pundits are already waxing eloquence on mitigating the punishment for the “juvenile’ culprit in the Delhi crime.

The Singapore and middle-east examples tell us that only if punishment is exemplary does it serve as a deterrent. But even those whose hearts are full of compassion for criminals should try to answer how safe would feel to have the18 year old boy whose fatal shove of the iron rod into the girl’s interiors caused her death, to be allowed to roam free in the neighborhood where defence-less young girls reside?

A society is judged not by its economic or military might, but by how it cares for its vulnerable sections.
As published in HT City ( Hindustan Times) dated 30 December, 2012.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Food Fads in Liver Disorders

By
In an attempt at trying to do well to those they love, spouses and parents often enforce diets on patients of liver diseases that often turn out to be detrimental. The commonest food fad is pale insipid boiled cabbage being doled out to nauseous patients suffering from hepatitis that makes them puke even more.  The liver, in a way, is a buzzing manufacturing unit that requires lots of energy to keep its multiple functions going. And it derives all this from the food we eat. During disease, such as during an attack of jaundice, when many of the liver cells get killed, the liver attemptsdamage control by trying to regenerate quickly. For its cells to multiply however, it requires a generous supply of energy that comes from carbohydrates, and protein, the building block for its cells and tissues. Boiled green vegetables unfortunately have neither of these. Hence the situation often progresses to that of a starved liver unable to recuperate due to cut-off food suppl...
2 comments
Read more

The Doctor’s Dress

By
The familiar white coat worn by physicians as their distinctive dress for over 100 years, has started generating  murmurs  of controversy. It is not uncommon to find the blood pressure to be higher when measured by a white-coat-wearing-doctor in the hospital or clinic than the readings obtained at home by relatives.  This is due to the anxiety that the white coat and the hospital setting evokes in patients, and has been termed “White Coat Hypertension”. Mature clinicians often routinely subtract a few points from these measurements when entering records in case charts or calculating the dose of anti-hypertensive medications to be prescribed. The white coat scares children too.  Kids often express their dislike for this dress by crying and screaming and by denying access to their bellies or chest for examination by paediatricians in this attire. Many pediatricians across the world have folded up their white coats and taken to informal colourful dressing to...
2 comments
Read more

Uberification of Health Care

By
The imaginative concept of matching transportation demands of people with cab facilities using a smartphone platform that Uber is credited to having created is now beginning to be applied to health care as well. At the outset, let me share with you what I understand of Uber. It is an on-line transportation company that develops, markets and operates the Uber mobile app, which allows consumers with smartphones to connect with Uber drivers through a software platform for taxi service. Uber itself does not own any assets such as cars, or hire the drivers. Uber was founded by Tavis Kalanick and Garrett Camp as recently as 2009 in San Francisco, but the impact and success of this “start up” has reverberated across the world, being now valued at US $ 62.5 billion. Fresh successful ideas in one domain often tickle the minds of entrepreneurs in other fields. Healthcare experts are now trying to explore if they can bring about a revolution in their sector as well. The proposition se...
Post a Comment
Read more