Mentally-Challenged Girl Found With Displaced Rectum, Are Girls Safe In India?

At around 4 pm on January 11, a 14-year-old girl near Jaipur was found missing by her family members. Her parents looked for her near their home and after no success, they approached the police. After five hours, the police found the girl severely brutalised with injuries in her private parts on a road near Tijara Fatak. The place is reportedly 25 kilometres away from the girl's home.

Trigger warning: This article contains details of a brutal assault

The doctors took more than two hours to operate on the girl at the JK Lone Hospital in Jaipur. She was brought there after being referred from the district hospital. Dr Arvind Shukla, the superintendent of the JK Lone Hospital said that the girl's rectum was displaced and the doctors had to create a hole in her stomach so that the stool could pass. According to reports, the girl is mentally-challenged and could not speak properly.

Alwar Mentally-Challenged Girl Brutalised:

The police are yet to determine what happened to the girl but with initial investigations it looks like the girl was raped. The authorities are still waiting on a medical report to ascertain the cause behind her distressed condition. Who could have had the heart to be so brutal to a teenage girl? Why was she found so far away from her home? Since the Rajasthan government has ordered a probe, we can expect to get answers in regards to this case but what is to say that such incidents will not happen again?

One headline after another in newspapers is about a woman, a toddler, a teenage girl was treated with the least humanity. How they were raped, sexually assaulted, murdered, trafficked and what not. Just when you think that there can't be a worse reported case, another one with even more gory details makes the front page. Are we doing anything to put a stop at this? Are our efforts enough if little girls are still dragged kilometres and kilometres away from their homes and left to die with their bodies disintegrated?

Suggested Reading: With Case Of Pune Minor’s Gangrape, Here’s Looking At India Rape Statistics

When the Jaipur minor girl's case came to the notice of authorities, the political drama began. The opposition blamed the ruling party for the inadequate law and order in the state. The Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot held meetings and directed the police chief to give him a report on the investigation of the case and strict action was demanded from different quarters. It seems nothing out of ordinary.

Considering the state of law and order in our country, we can expect the culprits to be caught and even given the harshest punishment but the question is how many culprits will it take to put a full stop at the crimes of this sort? How severe a punishment has to be to make the people of India realise that they cannot ruin the lives of little girls? Reportedly, even after checking the footage of 150 CCTV cameras in the area where the girl was found, not a single accused has been found.

Looking at the data, the National Crime Records Bureau report stated that Rajasthan reported the highest number of rape cases in India in 2020. A total of 5,310 reported cases of rape were reported. What is shocking is that out of the total cases, 1531 had accused persons who were no strangers to the survivors. They were friends, people they trusted and wanted to get married to. 2794 survivors were allegedly raped by their neighbours. Every day in Rajasthan, 14 girls were raped in 2020. We can install hundred of CCTV cameras on the streets, we can deploy a policeman on every corner of the city but will that ensure the safety of women and girls in India? The answer to that is on almost every page of any newspaper.

The views expressed are the author's own.