One true heroine - calls off wedding after baby is raped

I was heartened to read the following report in the Hindustan Times -

Bride calls off wedding after infant's rape.

If you have read my earlier post regarding the rape of a six month old baby, you would know why this is such great news.

If things have to change for women, it is the women who must act. The 18 year old bride - Rizwana Parveen -deserves the highest praise for taking the bold step in calling off her wedding after the guest from the groom's side raped the baby. She said she did not want to get married in a village, Kithor in Meerut district, where they did not respect women.

This is the best and the boldest decision the young woman could take and she did it. I hope one of our many NGOs honour her. For she deserves it. And I am so happy that she had the support of her parents and the entire panchayat in taking the action.

Meanwhile, the baby is battling for her life in a hospital. What should the punishment be for such a crime?

An earlier post on the issue of rape and punishment - http://shreevenkatram.blogspot.com/2009/07/rape-and-punishment.html

Shame! A six month old baby girl raped

What do you say to this? A 20 year old raped a six month old baby girl left in his care. How brutal can humans get! And we have people who recommend a punishment of a few years for such men. A man like this is so sick in the head, that he would be best bobitted or locked up in a cell for life.

I cannot understand why such people should get away with just a few years in jail. And we have our jurors order the release of a rapist from jail who had raped his student, driving her to suicide. Our law makers felt that as the man had performed well in the civil service exam he should be released. Five and a half year of a jail term that he had already served was enough for him. I gather he is a free man today. Just imagine, he will now be the Indian government's representative, a member of the Indian Adminstrative Service! God help us.

Some prominent citizens have appealed to the Chief Justice of Delhi. against the judgement.

Recently the Chief Justice of India recommend that a raped woman should be free to marry her rapist if she wants. I would think in a civilised society, a rapist should be punished, not offered matrimony. In our country, very few men will come forward to marry a raped woman. And as marriage is held as the be-all and end-all for a woman, there could be instances where a woman  may feel it is better to marry the rapist than face the taunts of the society for the rest of her life. We need to change mindsets so that society shuns the culprit and not the victim. If a man who has raped is made an outcaste, thrown out of his job, made ineligible to ever hold a  government job, and no woman agrees to marry him, and others refuse to socialise with him, instances of rape would come down.
The suggestion by the Chief Justice has shocked many. What justice can women hope to get when our law makers think in this vein? Read here another reaction to the judge's suggestion. And does the fact that there are few women judges tell it all. Women are less than 10 per cent in India's judiciary.

And this post following the bride's reaction.

Rape victim has to resort to a legal notice to take an exam

What do you say to this - A 12 year old school girl who was raped has to resort to a legal intervention to get her school to allow her to take her exam!
And what is this that we learn - that the school thought that her presence at the school would ruin its reputation! Shades of the Ruchika Girhotra case - where instead of providing support to the victim, it threw her out, after she was molested by a senior police officer. In the present case, the young girl was forced to withdraw from school after her neighbour raped her.
The report fails to mention the action against the alleged rapist. It does not tell us what has happed to the criminal and how society is acting against him. Has he been thrown out of his job if he is working, or college if he is a student? Are his neighbour boycotting him? All we know is that he is 20 years old, an adult who raped a child. Why is it that news reports do not mention the action taken againt the man? Or is he roaming scot free?

The progress in the MCD ghost employee case

With the PIL being filed in the alleged ghost employee issue, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi seems to finally be shaking off its stupor. It is reported to have told the court that it has ordered a probe into its ghost employee scam and would need another four weeks to complete it. The next date for the hearing has been fixed for April 28.
Let us see how long this case takes and if the guilty are finally brought to book.
To read a news report on the PIL hearing on February 24 click here.

Another scam hits the civic agency - this time about bogus pensioners! To read, click here.

A PIL on the MCD ghost employee scam

Here is some heartwarming news - An NGO has filed a Public Interest Litigation regarding the scam relating to the ghost employees on the rolls of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. Hopefully, now we will come to know the full truth, which as residents of Delhi and citizens of India we need to know. Regular updates will be posted on this blog. I am pasting below a news item from PTI which gives some details about the PIL. It is unfortunate that apart from the Times of India, no other national paper has considered it worth its while to delve into the ghost employee issue.

As a resident of Delhi, all I can say is that seeing the garbage piled up on the streets and in marketplaces, there appears to be an urgent need for the MCD employees to do their job. The city has become dirtier over the decades.

And the stray dog population of the city has jumped. It has become very risky to go for an early morning or a later evening walk for you may encounter the canine species in packs. If you are lucky all you may have to do is a tap dance over all that dog shit. Wonder what happened to all the MCD employees who are to ensure that our streets are free of the strays? Do they really exist?

Delhi as a world class city? Wish I could see it happening..

Here is the news item about the PIL-

New Delhi, Feb 10 (PTI) The scam relating to alleged ghost employees in MCD today reached the Delhi High Court which sought a response from the NCT government and the civic agency within two weeks on a PIL seeking a probe into it.
Issuing a notice also to Anti-corruption branch, a Division Bench of Chief Justice A P Shah and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw sought their replies by February 24.
The Bench was hearing a Public Interest Litigation filed by Jagrook Welfare Society, an NGO, through counsel C S Parashar seeking an inquiry by CBI or an independent agency into the scam relating to the allegation that MCD was paying salary to more than 22,000 of its gardeners and sweepers who existed as employees only on paper.

Earlier post

Singapore court awards 30 years to a child rapist

Thirty years in jail for raping a child. This is indeed the kind of punishment that should be awarded to child rapists. Singapore shows the way. Read the story in Strait Times.

Contrast this with the punishment meted out to child molesters and rapists in India.

The Ruchika molestation case

The Ruchika suicide case signifies all that is wrong with the Indian system. And how it can be twisted by those in power, to harass simple law-abiding citizens.

SPS Rathore, a senior Haryana Police officer, used the system to play havoc with the lives of the Girhotra family, pressuring them to withdraw the charge of molestation the 14 year old Ruchika Girhotra had made against him. The result - the vivacious Ruchika, a promising tennis player, was forced to end her life, after her family was hounded for over three years following her complaint and her brother was tortured and false cases of auto theft slapped on him.

And what is the punishment that our judiciary system awards Rathore? Six months in jail and Rs 1000 as fine. That too after 19 years!

In fact, in this blog, all the reasons that led to Ruchika's sucide have been discussed in various posts.

First, a sullied police force - Haryana Police, one of the most corrupt in the country. Rathore as a senior police officer, molested the young girl after calling her to his office. It could have led to a rape, but for the arrival of her friend Aradhana, an eye witness to the case. After a complaint was filed against Rathore he went on to harass the family no end. Her friend, Aradhana, and her father have said that her school, Sacred Heart Convent, expelled her follwoing pressure from Rahore. The school has however denied bowing to any pressure. But the case still shows an education system that is most child unfriendly. The school should be like a child's second home. Ruchika had been molested. She did not have a mother. Her teachers should have stepped in, giving her the strength to cope with the trauma. But our education system does not put the child first, many of our top schools are money making rackets open to being exploited by the powerful. If all the teachers and the management of the school had decided that they would stand by the child, Ruchika could have been saved. Aradhana tells us that after the school expelled her, the once vivacious Ruchika went into a shell. The school failed her.

After Rathore had a string of auto theft cases slapped against Ruchika's brother, had him arrested and tortured, the family, which was well settled in Panchkula, was forced to shift to another city as the police, who is supposed to protect, had turned predators. One wonders why Ruchika's neighbours did not protest? Why couldn't they have demanded action against Rathore? And why the management of the Gymkhana club where Ruchika was molested by Rathore, did not throw Rathore out after the charge was made against him? The fact that two teenaged girls had penned a complaint against him, should have been reason enough. Young girls do not go around saying they have been molested, and the complaint should have been ground enough to remove Rathore from the helm of a gymkhana where young girls were coming to play. So the third failure was that of the civil society. Why don't we protest a wrong being done to our neighbour?

What do you call a police officer who tortures children? Is there a word for it? The departmental inquiry against him soon after the crime, which had found him guilty, was put into cold storage and ignored by the state's top politicians. Instead of seeing that the complaint was speedily looked into and the man punished, the political bosses promoted him. He went on to become the DGP of Haryana police. The political system failed the young girl.

It took the complainants nine years to lodge an FIR! And 19 years for the courts to pronounce Rathore guilty! And a sentence of six months of imprisonment and Rs 1000 as fine was awarded to the guilty man. An absolute failure of the judicial system. Our laws do not recognise that a child can be molested.

Thank God for the free press that we have. The only reason it is being given another look is because the television channels took it up, providing regular updates. The public was aghast. The pressure has built up. The case is being given another look. The critics call it trial by the media, but when institutions fail to deliver, it is the media that shows the society what has happened. Like a mirror, it shows the way things are.

A mentally-challenged rape victim copes with motherhood

The Supreme Court in its wisdom allowed a mentally challenged rape victim in Chandigarh to carry the foetus full term and she has given birth to a baby girl.

Meanwhile, it has been confirmed that the mother was raped by one of the security guards at Ashraya, a state run home for abadoned women, where the victim was living. The rapist, a married man and a father of two children, has been arrested.

Now what?

With the father behind bars and the mother mentally challegned, who is going to bring up the baby? What arrangements has the Supreme Court esnured so that the baby is brought up in a loving and caring atmosphere? What steps have been taken that the girl child would be safe from predators that prowl the state run home? Are the activists who pleaded against the High Court verdict that had called for the medical termination of the pregnancy spending time with the child? Or is this yet another case of misplaced human rights? Whose rights are we talking about?

Read here how the 19-year-old mother, said to be mentally challenged is coping. It is sad, very very sad, what the State has done to her.

Earlier post- 
A disturbing judgment

Corruption and India

A scandal of this proportion and there has been no outcry from Delhites. Are we so dead as citizens that we cannot even protest and demand action against the employees who robbed us and the politicians who let the system come to this pass?
It shows the extent to which we fail as citizens and forgo our right for effective governance.
One would have thought a scandal of this proportion where over 22,000 ghost employees have been drawing salaries for God knows how many years, would have led to some protest, a demand that the men who cheated us be dismissed, but nothing has happened. Not a whimper from Delhi's residents and the many residents' associations and citizens groups and the NGOs that populate the Capital city. Apart from a newspaper report or two, the citizens seem unconcerned.
We have got so used to the filth and malaise around, that like sewer rats it has become a vital part of ourselves. We cannot imagine, it is completely beyond our psyche to visualise a corruption-free government department. By not protesting about this scandal, by not demanding that action be taken against the scoundrels, we open ourselves to more such loot. And where is our moral police, so quick to jump at women who go to bars, so quick to even bash them up, so quick to pull down artist's works, or demand ban on movies they feel corrupt human minds?
Where are they? Why don't they protest? Don't they think this corruption and filth spells doom for India? Or as sewer rats it has become our life?

And now this- MCD staffers get salary six times in two months!
Earlier posts - Ghost employees of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi
The most corrput Municipal Corporation of Delhi

Happy to post 15 months later that the Indian public is reacting to corruption and How!

Mera India Bridge the Gap workshop - Help build a healthy and a prosperous India

If you are between the ages of 18 and 35 years and reside in Delhi, here is an opportunity to attend a very special workshop --

Mera India, Bridge the Gap
invites you to a workshop
Transforming ideas into action
The building of a prosperous and a healthy India
On December 12, 2009 (Saturday)
9.30 am onwards to conclude with Lunch
(to be held in Delhi, you will be informed of the venue)

The workshop will inform how youth can work towards an India that is free of poverty and hunger, is healthy and informed and where women and men enjoy an equal status.

Please confirm your participation asap as there are a limited number of seats. There is no entry or participation fee. Participation certificates will be awarded.

The workshop follows the Mera India Bridge the Gap contest where the young participants had advocated for youth playing a more active role in nation building and meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

So if you are interested, do drop us a line at indiabridgethegap@gmail.com

We look forward to working together.

Bridge the Gap Team