Woman Left To Die By Her Rapists, Noosed To Electric Pole: Her Story Matters

Woman Gangraped In Bihar: The real state of women in India, as a matter of fact, is not really improving and the biggest evidence of it can be seen in reports of horrific crimes committed against women, every day. On May 25, 2021, a new report surfaced from Bihar, it was about an alleged gangrape on a woman who was found half-dead, hanging from an electric pole in the state's Vibhutipur area.

(Trigger Warning: The following contains details of sexual assault that some may find extremely disturbing. Reader discretion highly advised.) 

The police said that she was found naked in an unconscious state by some of the locals in the area. The same people raised an alarm and took the survivor to a nearby hospital. She reportedly survived but is still not in the state to reveal who is responsible for her current plight. The people who wronged her are still at large and it cannot be said that they won't do the same to another woman until they are kept behind bars.

The woman according to the police had stepped out to use an open toilet on Tuesday when the attackers allegedly gangraped her and left her to die. It is reported that the alleged rapists threatened to kill her if she raised her voice, they possibly thought she was dead when they hung her to an electric pole in a naked state.

The dark nature of the crime makes one question, what was really the motive of the perpetrators? Did they want to put their "manhood" on display by leaving the woman on the electric pole like a flag over a conquered land? Are the men in this country so unbothered about the law and order as they go on committing harrowing crimes against women?

The official data on reported rapes in India are enough to prove that some men in this country have stopped being human beings. To call them animals will be simply an insult to the species. As the rape laws in India started to get stricter with fast track courts and provisions of life and death sentences, one hoped that it would help to ensure women's safety but did it really?

When the National Crimes Records Bureau ( NCRB) data from 2019 was compared to that of 2018, it showed that the reported cases of rape in India raised by 7.3%. In 2019, some upper caste men in Hathras gangraped a Dalit girl. She later died, was cremated without the consent of her family. Along with her, over 31, 755 cases of rape were reported in 2019. This means that 87 women were raped every day in India.

In 2020, according to the data collected between January to September, four rape cases were reported in Bihar every day.

What is really worrying about these numbers is the fact that these cases were reported, one can only imagine the actual number of women being sexually assaulted, raped and killed in India. We must acknowledge that many such cases go unreported as sometimes the perpetrators are able to get away with the influence of money, their "upper caste" status in society and sheer negligence and ignorance of the police officers who simply do not register complaints. When this is the kind of treatment a rape survivor is met with then who can blame them for not speaking up against their assaulters and rapists?

The hurdles faced by a woman when she tries legally avenge herself in this country can be seen in the recent judgements given by the courts of law. The case of former journalist Tarun Tejpal comes to mind. Despite several years of investigations, hearings and his own email practically confessing that he did sexually assault his female colleague was overlooked. A sessions court in Goa acquitted him this week. Many women's rights activists rightly put it, Tejpal's acquittal is a humiliation to every survivor in India.

Views expressed by the author are their own.