An Extract from a News report!
As the repercussions of the gang rape and death of the Delhi girl, the country has sparked off a debate over the treatment of women. It is being questioned whether sexual abuse is worse in India or other countries too, reported Tom Wright for WSJ’s India Real Time.
Chief Justice of India (CJI) Altamas Kabir said “It’s good to know that after the Dec 16 tragic incident, people have started raising their voice on crime against women,” as reported by IANS.
However, Indians working to make the country safer for women say emphasizing that rape is also a concern in the U.S., Europe and other countries is irrelevant to their fight. Vrinda Grover, a Supreme Court lawyer who has worked for two decades on women’s issues said “It’s a bad analogy, it just means there’s equal cause for concern everywhere,” reported India Real Time.
India may not be alone in facing a rape problem. For instance a document from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime revealed that there were 1.8 incidents of reported rape in India per 100,000 people in 2010 compared to 27.3 in the U.S. But Indian activists say this kind of comparison would be misleading.
Sudha Sundararaman, general secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association, a nonprofit organization said very few rape cases get reported in India due to pressure from society to cover up abuses and the unwillingness of police to register cases. Sundararaman says approximately only about one in 10 rapes get recorded in the country. Thus, making India’s reporting rate much less than the results of surveys in the U.S.
Only 46 percent of U.S. rape cases get reported to the police as per the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, or RAINN, a U.S. nonprofit organization.
However, there are other reasons for the Indian numbers to be low. For example, Indian law doesn’t recognize rape committed within a marriage and it doesn’t allow for rape of men, etc.
The rape statistics of countries can also be compared by looking at conviction rates. As per India’s National Crime Records Bureau there were 24,206 reported rape cases in 2011. Further, of those that made it to court that year, 26 percent were convicted. While in the U.S., it is estimated that just over half of rape cases that are prosecuted each year leads to a conviction, a higher rate than India.
Indians are raged over the death of the 23-year-old student and hope the country will take actions to curb this crime and improve public safety for women.
