It was a grisly end to a story that has been a stain on India for almost eight years. The hanging on Friday morning of the four men who carried out the 2012 gang-rape and murder of Jyoti Singh – who was christened Nirbhaya by Indian media, meaning “fearless” – marked the end of a drawn out and painful saga that exposed the country’s appalling record on sexual violence against women.
Nirbhaya’s parents openly celebrated that “justice” had finally been served, yet the crowds baying for blood outside the Delhi jail where the execution took place, bearing signs calling for “death to rapists” and cheering as news of the hanging was announced, made for uncomfortable watching.
There is little evidence that capital punishment is a deterrent for sexual violence and since India introduced capital punishment for rape cases after Singh’s murder, the problem has only continued to escalate. The calls to “hang the rapist” have been an easy way for politicians to be seen to respond to cases of sexual violence, while ignoring the endemic underlying issues that make India the most dangerous country in the world to be a woman, where a woman is raped every 20 minutes.
While the case shocked the world and prompted the government into so-called action, in reality little has changed. The degradation of women remains systemic and women in India, in both rural and urban communities, have to spend large proportions of their days planning ahead, just to make sure they can get to their next destination safely. The mechanisms for women to report sexual violence remain woefully inadequate, more than 100,000 rape cases remain in the courts, and state governments are reluctant to even invest in basic safety measures such as street lighting. The fact that the 10bn-rupee (£112m) fund set up by the government after the murder – to give states money to invest in women’s safety initiatives – remains 91% unspent demonstrates that even when there is funding, there is no motivation to tackle the problem.
While the Indian newspapers are filled on a daily basis with gruesome stories of rapes and murders of women of all ages, it was the gang-rape of a 27-year-old vet in Hyderabad in November that again captured global headlines and showed how little had changed. The threat of capital punishment did not stop the four men from allegedly sabotaging the woman’s scooter, lying in wait until she approached asking for help, then gang-raping her, suffocating her and burning her body.
After the event, yet again, the resounding response was for the men to be immediately hanged. When the culprits were later shot in suspicious circumstances by the police, who claimed they had been attempting to escape, there was nationwide jubilation. Until there is an acceptance across society and government that violence begets violence and that executing several culprits is not the cure for the endemic and enduring plague of sexual violence nationwide, both safety and justice will remain out of reach for the women of India.
