Rape fastest growing crime in India, says National Crime Records Bureau

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) says rape is the fastest growing crime in India. NCRB figures available for 2009 show that 21,397 rape incidents were reported in the country in 2009. There were also more than 25,000 cases of kidnapping and abduction of women, aside from cases of molestation which numbered more than 38,000.

This means that every day -
about 60 women who get raped in India, report the crime. There will be many more who keep quiet.

About 68 women get abducted and kidnapped and 104 women who are molested pick up courage and report the crime.
To read a detailed report by Inter Press Service, click here.

Other posts - Rape and punishment
Is there something seriously wrong with the way we bring up boys?

I came across this post - Valuable advice
What do you do if you have been raped 

Is Climate Change an Exaggerated Concern?

Here is an event open to all college students. Bring your i-card along! 


Is Climate Change an Exaggerated Concern?



Location:  Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi

March 24, 2011 From 11.30 am to 1 pm

Prakriti- The Environment Society, is pleased to invite you to join us for a panel discussion on ‘Climate Change is an Exaggerated Concern’ organised by Green Karbon, a Deutsche Bank- Sanctuary Asia Climate Change- Biodiversity initiative.


The Speakers
· Muhammad A. Khan, Advisor of Law and Policy to Ministry of Environment and Forests
· Professor Vinod Chandra Menon, Former Member National Disaster Management Authority, Government of India
· Samir Menon, Head of Eco-Sustainable Services, Tata Consultancy Services.

Speakers from LSR
· Dr. Kalyani, Senior Assistant Professor, Department of Education, Lady Shri Ram College
· Preeti Venkatram, President, Prakriti- The Environment Society of Lady Shri Ram College


Please register at the link given below:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dHRXcXRraVNDMWtrWGsxS0tJMWwyLXc6MQ

Lady Shri Ram College's Go Green Week

Lady Shri Ram College is hosting an environment week from March 21 to 26 with competitions galore for college students!

Make an ad, design a folder, take part in a quiz, make a photo story or participate in the LSR MCOP.

Certificates and prizes to be won!

For details click on LSR Prakriti Week.

Another shocking judgement on rape by the Indian Supreme Court

All it needs is Rs 50,000 as fine to buy freedom from a prison sentence for gangrape.

Three men were convicted of gangraping a woman and the Punjab and Haryana High Court had upheld their conviction and punishment. The three criminals appealed against their conviction and the Supreme Court of India let them off after (as reported in The Hindustan Times) they agreed to a "compromise formula" of paying Rs 50,000 each to the victim.

Note what has been considered by the court -
1. The rapists had said that "they and the victim were happily married to their spouses".  Consider, if a man can rape a woman, what torture he must be inflicting on his wife? Did the judges talk to the wives? Did they find out what kind of husbands the men were? I think the wives are better off without having to live with such men. The court would have done the three wives a big favour by keeping their men locked up.
I would go so far as to say that the wife or fiancee of a rapist should have the freedom to walk off from the relationship with no legal binding if she so chooses and take the children with her. The man should lose all his rights to his property which should go to the wife and other dependant relatives.

2. The fact that the victim is "happily married" is no credit to the rapists. I would say that the woman's husband has shown maturity and not reacted the way we have known some husbands to behave.

3. The men said "they wanted to live peacefully". It is easy to say that after committing a violent crime. What happened to their desire of living peacefully earlier? The fact that they can attack a woman in this way makes them dangerous criminals. They should be kept behind bars for life. For they spell danger for women. How will the court ensure that they do not repeat their act? It is not only the safety of the victim but other women too in question.

I am happy to see two eminent women advocates Kamini Jaiswal and Pinky Anand crticise the shocking judgement of the highest court in land.

India does treat its women shabbily.

My reaction to the judgement is as an Indian woman. To read what lawyers are saying about the judgement read here.

It was heartening to see the National Commission for Women react to the judgement and prepare to seek a its review.  But I am wondering why there were no protests by Indian women. What has happened to our women's groups? I remember the mid-Seventies and the early-Eighties when as young women we marched to Parliament, held protest marches, organised sit-ins and gheraos on so many issues affecting us - dowry, rape laws, portrayal in the media. The activism helped initiate many changes in the laws and society.

But where are our young firebrand women today? 

A lesson in living

The following article by me appeared in the Speaking Tree, The Times of India, under the title "Lessons from Ma Ginger"

Behind the trunk

She was a lady of the streets. She lived by her wits and gave us menacing stares. But we were persistent. We looked out for her, knew the time when she would hit the front yard or the back lane. The boys were after her — human as well as feline. For she was a real beauty — a beige cat with brown stripes and the cutest face you ever saw.

I found her one morning in my backyard, looking as if she owned it, and I was the intruder. I raised my arm threateningly. She got up lazily to plonk herself a little distance away. There was some movement behind the steel trunk. She had brought her day-old kittens — three ginger like her, and two black and white after the father. We knew him. He would stretch out in the park, his black coat striking against the monsoon grass.

One could not possibly drive away a mother and her babies, and so she stayed. You could catch her most of the time feeding and tending litter, taking short breaks for herself, when she ensured the kitties were securely behind the trunk. She suffered our presence silently, kept a suspicious eye on us, inflicting us with steely glares and an occasional snarl.

One night we woke up to much whining and crying. We ran out to see Ma sitting on her haunches guarding her brood from a big brown cat on the boundary wall with the meanest face you ever saw. Seeing us, Meanie slunk off, and we got back into bed only to be woken up moments later by feline cries.

This time we picked up a walking stick, feeling very sorry for the family and hoping to teach him a lesson. Ma had moved back many paces while Meanie was now on the ground ready for attack. Seeing us, he jumped back up on the wall and Ma picked up courage to give a chase. The kitties were quivering in fear. We left the stick out hoping it would instil fear in Meanie.

Suddenly, there was much snarling and whining. We dashed out to discover he had killed a kitty. Meanie jumped up the wall and vanished into the dark. A lifeless kitten lay there, while its siblings and mother gathered around it. It was a deeply moving moment. Sorrow hung visibly over the little family that had frolicked during the day. Ma did not bother about us, so great was her grief.

As the early morning sun rose, I saw Ma on the boundary wall. The kitties had gone, even the dead one. Ma had probably found a safer place. The family emerged a week later. The kitties were bigger and Ma had brought them to our front lawn. They tumbled about in the pots. But by the end of the day, the family had moved again. We were horrified to learn that she had moved next door, probably thinking the overgrown bushes would provide the much-needed cover. But she had not contended with two little horrors who lived there. We knew they had spotted the kitties, for we heard their squeals and that of their little sister. What would Ma do now?

That night we found a dead kitty on the compound wall. The next night, we heard a lot of screeching and whining and knew Ma was in trouble again. Sure enough, a third kitty was dead in the flower bed. Ma was down to two kitties. We watched out for her anxiously. We do not know whether she moved house again, but she preferred the quiet of our garden for her late evening feeding session.

Once again, the family disappeared, only to reappear a few days later. Ma’s beautiful face had a wound. We knew Meanie was on her trail. Sure enough, there was only one kitty and she was back living with us. She hid it sometimes behind the garbage bin, or under the staircase, even under the stationary car before she took off for a break. It has now been a week, but we have not seen the pair. I used to think life was hard and unfair.

I used to crib about small things. But seeing the way Ma fought a battle for survival every minute of the day, with no support system or friends, humbled me. She faced life as best as she could… against great odds, never quitting. Ma taught me a lesson in living.

Scurrying for cover

Corruption and India and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi

How many employees does the Municipal Corporation of Delhi have on its rolls?

One would think in this age and date the figure would be readily available. But no. It is the biggest mystery. And it is taking the form of an action thriller. The Delhi High Court, the Delhi police and the MCD itself are trying to unravel the mystery. And I, as a resident of Delhi, am waiting with baited breath to know the number. But it seems the wait is going to be long.

Various figures  have emerged at various points in time of the MCD's elusive employees --the sweepers, the gardeners that are supposed to keep India's Capital city clean and green but are missing from its rolls:  22000, 29680, 43415 even 212 and now some strange new figure. We rarely see the elusive workforce. And the biometric system discovered what we always knew, that there were a substaintial number of ghosts on the rolls. So a machine did what we residents could not achieve for years. It got the authorities in charge to ponder. Yes, yes, there was some deep rot here. These ghosts were sucking the organisation dry of funds. Salaries were being given to the ghosts. Newspaper reports told us that the amount ran into many crores ( a crore = ten million) every month.

But  with bigger and full bodied scams hitting the country - the CWG scam, the mine scam, the  fodder scam, the Taj corridor scam, the 2G spectrum scam,  the chief justice scam, the Adarsh scam, and then Bhopal's land  scam, the NOIDA land scam, and now the IAS-Joshi couple scam, and an even bigger the Indian black money-Swiss bank scam, the MCD scam was ghostly in comparison.

I maintain the biggest asset India has is its press. Which brings to the fore the doings of our leaders, our bureaucrats,  for us minions, who work instead of loot and cheat for a living, to see.  If it was not for India's press we would never get to know of the horrors the leaders we elect, the bureaucrats who we hope will give us  functioning systems, the judges who occupy the hallowed confines of court rooms, do upon us. It is then not difficult to relate why millions have no access to health care, why our children are given a shoddy or  no education, why farmers are driven to suicide and getting a roof on one's head remains a lifetime achievement for millions of Indians.

When there is so much corruption around, even the MCD vampires pale in comparison. I was however heartened to see that the police on orders of the court has been tracking some of these employees, to see if they are human or indeed ghosts. So what better way than to go to their houses and verify their human existence. The exercise did reveal that there were indeed some ghosts.

But then, a surprise, the MCD came up with another figure. I was amazed to see a new word crop up in its lexicon. 'Substitute' is the word used for the ghosts now. And the figure of these 'substitute employees' is almost double that of the ghosts. Vexed?  A 'substitute employee' sounds better than a 'ghost employee'. It is more respectable for sure! At one time, there was talk of thousands of 'temporary employees'.

Meanwhile, I wait for one to show up on my street. I am not choosy, ghost or substitute, either one would do. The leaves, the plastic chips packets, the bits of paper and the dog shit are piling high. One day during the Commonwealth Games, I thought I had a vision. I blinked. Yes, indeed there he was, holding a long broom and sweeping the street. I wanted to go up and touch him to see if he was real. He must have been for my street was clean for a few days. Even the kerb stones got a watery coat of white paint. Never mind, if it was as elusively faint as the ghost. You could see it was white, if you tried hard to ignore the grey of the kerbstone that stubbornly showed its face. Now, the ghostly paint has disappeared and so has the man with the broom. 

All that remains now are streams of dry leaves, mounds of paper, the dog shit and the peanut shells....
When will the ghosts get real? Your guess is as good as mine. Meanwhile, I will track the news reports of the scams and the scamsters. I do not need any Western make believe thrillers. Made in India stories provide a real good read. And what is more, they are for real!

An earlier post -
http://shreevenkatram.blogspot.com/2009/07/ghost-employees-of-municipal.html

70 dead in building crash, but the building does not exist in MCD's records!

I have done a few posts on the corruption in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. We got to see the biggest consequence of this corruption  on November 15 when an illegally constructed building came crashing down in East Delhi. Seventy persons lost their lives.

Here are some of the earlier posts -
The most corrupt Municipal Corporation of Delhi
Shocking scandal 

The owner-builder of the building has been arrested. But what about the corrupt MCD officers and political masters who would have taken bribes to look the other way so as to have made the building possible? MCD true to its devious ways, is  now saying it has no records of the building! It is a smart and time-tested way to protect one's men. If files go missing, or no records are kept, how would it be proven that the building  existed in the first place?

Some years ago I did a survey of the builder floors in South Delhi. All of them had covered more than the sanctioned area or had more than the stipulated number of floors. Though almost all these buildings had no completion certificate, there were buyers and the properties were being registered by the government.

There there are plenty of buildings standing all over the city flouting norms. I know of two such buildings in my neighbourhood which the MCD made a great show  of  a cosmetic demolition, for these very obviously were protuding on to the common land. But some months later they were all patched up. Yes, the gaping holes in the buildings outer walls made by MCD's demolition squad, were filled and today life goes on in the buildings.  Who benefited in this drama of build-demolish-build? None other than the MCD officers and the politicians.

Delhi is in a high risk earthquake prone zone, and it is makes it all the more necessary that all buildings adhere to some basic norms. But who cares? We are just lucky that there have not been more such cases of building collapse.

An article in the Outlook about MCD stirring to act and the blame game between the two political parties which have ruled the corporation.

This is yet another case of MCD corruption. It would be proper to say of MCD murder. For many lives were lost and families destroyed because of corruption. Will the guilty officers be punished? Wait and watch.

UPDATE: Municipal Corporation of Delhi's ghost employee case

The latest on the ghost employee case -

The Delhi Police has been unable to trace 212 employees, we are informed. What about the thousands of other ghost employees? Have they been tracked? As a reader, I failed to find a clear answer in the reports by the media tracking the case.

However, we learn that the Delhi Police has lodged two FIRs in connection with the alleged existence of ghost employees in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi after making a door-to-door verification of "the total employees whose details were provided by the civic body for investigation", according to a report appearing in The Hindu. What is the number of the "total employees"? Who knows this number?

Standing Counsel Nazmi Waziri appearing for the Delhi Police has said the police were also investigating whether the muster roll of temporary sweepers of the civic body was also inflated as alleged by the petitioner in the matter.

The Bench has directed the police to file a status report on January 19 after conducting the inquiry into the ghost employee case.

It is necessary to point out that a number of possible reasons or excuses are now being given for the ghost employees. We have to wait and watch for the truth to be uncovered.

Punishment for sexual harassment in the US and for rape and murder in India

I read the following news item from Washington in the Indian Express about a man being indicted by a jury for groping a sleeping woman on a flight-

Ranchhodbhai Lakha, 61, of Alpharetta, Georgia, faces charges of assault and abusive sexual contact for the Sep 28 incident on a Delta Air Lines flight from Dallas to Atlanta, the US Attorney's Office said on October 20, 2010.


A 20-year-old woman seated in the same row as Lakha fell asleep and woke up to find the man allegedly touching her below the waist, according to US.Attorney Sally Quillian Yates. The woman removed his hand but Lakha allegedly touched her again, prompting the woman to get up from her seat and report the incident to a flight attendant, Yates said.

If convicted, Lakha could face a maximum sentence of life in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

What amazed me is the kind of punishment he would get - a maximum of life in prison. Just contrast this to the very lenient laws we have in India. Even the recently proposed quantum of punishment for rape gets only a few years in prison. And then, the courts here are so liberal in letting off  sexual offenders, even those who have been convicted of serious crime like rape. The Supreme Court of India recently commuted the death penalty awarded to rapist and murderer Santosh Kumar Singh to life sentence because of some "mitigating circumstances" in his favour. And what did the court find as mitigating? Among them the fact that he  had married after his acquittal by the lower court and was the father of a girl child! What if he had fathered a male child?

As a woman, I find this reasoning difficult to digest. The judgment, like most judgments on rape and murder,  is very patriarchal in its nature, completely overlooking justice to the woman raped and the welfare of the women around the man. In this case Priyadarshini Mattoo who he raped and murdered, strangling her with an electric wire and battering her face with his helmet, and his own wife and daughter who would have to live with the constant reminder of him being in jail. Imagine life for the little girl. Growing up would be so tough knowing that your father was a  rapist and murderer.

What kind of a life would the wife have?  Having to come to terms with the fact that the husband has raped and killed a woman? Would she ever be able to forget that fact? It would be haunting her every single moment of her life.  Controversial as it might sound, it would be better for both the mother and the daughter if he was awarded the death penalty as the court had earlier decreed.  They would have a chance to start their lives afresh.  There would be justice done for Priyadarshini Mattoo, the woman he stalked, raped and brutally killed.  Priyadarshini's father, Chaman Lal Mattoo, who has been fighting a tough battle to get justice for his daughter says he is "shattered and dismayed" by the verdict.  His lawyer has said they would go in for a review of the punishment to be meted out to the rapist and murderer.

Life term in India is really no punishment for the well connected. They have reasonable comforts and do  some light jobs. What is more they can be released in a few years, and be regularly out of jail on parole. Watch on NDTV what Neelam Katara, whose son was murdered, has to say about life term in India.

What do you think should be the punishment for rape, and rape and murder?

A temple for all faiths

The story is very inspiring - A temple of all religions at Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. Imagine Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and others praying together at one spot! The businessman Laljibhai Satya Sanehi who built the the temple 60 years ago must have been a real visionary. I have heard of temples and masjids coexisting, standing side by side, but a common prayer house seems to be the first.
What amazes me is that it has been standing for the last 60 years, being visited by people of different faiths, but those outside of Ayodhya did not know of its presence.

There should be more such temples, not only in India but all over the world. Common prayer houses which are open to people of all faiths. Each such structure would be one small step towards a world free of religious divides. A more spiritual world. What do you say?