Child Rape In India On The Rise
By J.S. von Dacre
Investigative Journalist of the
International Criminal Court against Child Kidnapping
The face of eight-year-old Asifa Bano
is plastered on newspapers all across the world. An umbrella of lashes frames
her big, dark eyes as she stares back at the viewer, in a haunting gaze that
demands to know how her life could be so tragically and heinously cut short.
No words could encapsulate the sheer
terror, agony, and despair this little girl must have felt in the last moments
of her life. Any hope she had for a loved one to rescue her, was snuffed
out–swiftly and callously, like a candle blown out in the coldest of
winds.
Asifa was kidnapped and held in a
temple for many days where she was gang-raped, tortured and finally, killed.
She was then strangled before a rock was used to bludgeon her head. It is
alleged that one of the police officers involved in the crime, pleaded to be
able to rape her one more time before she died.
Sanji Ram, a 60-year-old retired
government official, believed to be the leader of the gang, his son, Vishal,
his nephew, his friend, and a minor, have been accused of Asifa’s rape and
murder.
Also implicated are police
officers SurenderVerma, AnandDutta, Tilak Raj and Mr. Khajuria, who all allegedly helped to plan the
schoolgirl's abduction from the Kashmiri meadows where she was tending to her
horses on that fateful day that she was taken.
It is believed that the motivation for the ruthless act was to
force the Gujjars, a nomadic Muslim community of shepherds to which Asifa
belonged, out of Jammu. The divide between the two religious sides–Hindus and
Muslims, has long been fuelled by a bitter feud.
Mohammed YousufPujwala, Asifa’s adoptive
father said, "She played with all the children…She didn't know the
difference between a Muslim and a Hindu. She was only 8 years old.
"Now every moment I feel her absence.
Everything reminds me of her–her clothes, her place at the table, the horses.”
When Asifa
disappeared on 10 January, her family knew something was wrong when her horses
returned without her. They immediately launched a search for her through the
long night with lanterns, flashlights, and axes. When they came up empty-handed,
they filed a complaint with the police. Yet, according to her parents, the
officers were unhelpful, with one even suggesting that the eight-year-old had
eloped with a boy.
Speaking to the BBC,
Asifa’s mother, Naseema, described the moment she saw her daughter’s crumpled
body, "She had been tortured. Her legs were broken…Her nails had
turned black and there were blue and red marks on her arm and fingers."
Hundreds of
thousands of protesters have spilled raucously on streets all across India to
demand justice.
Yet, these
protests continue to be a recurring theme while
rapes in India keep increasing. The number of registered rape cases in Mumbai alone rose by
40 per cent in 2017 when compared to 2016. Out of that figure, almost
60 per cent were minor girls.
In the past week, the body of an unidentified eleven-year-old
girl was discovered on the side of a road in Surat. She was tortured, raped and
murdered; her body was marked with over 80 injuries, some of which covered her
genitals.
Miles away in Kotwali Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, a
seven-year-old girl’s body was found. While her parents were distracted with
preparations for a wedding, the child was kidnapped, raped, murdered and then
discarded on a dusty roadside–far away from her family and a justice system
that continues to fail others like her.
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