News Analysis |
A teenage girl has been raped and burned alive in India, in the third such attack in a week in the country. The 16-year-old girl died after being soaked in fuel and set on fire in the Sagar district of Madhya Pradesh, the BBC reported.
Police said she was killed after telling her attacker she would tell her family about the rape. She was in her home at the time. Police have arrested a suspect, named as 28-year-old Ravi Chadhar. Two other similar attacks occurred in India this week, both in the state of Jharkhand.
A 16-year-old girl was burned alive by a man accused of her rape, while a 17-year-old girl remains in a critical condition after being set alight by a suspect who allegedly said he wanted to marry her. Reports of sexual assault of children have dominated headlines in recent weeks, leading to an outpouring of anger across the country.
The most recent statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau show that crimes against women have increased 34% in the past four years. India has been designated the worst country for women in the G20 nations even lower than Saudi Arabia.
Indian police have arrested 14 people suspected of kidnapping, raping and burning to death a teenage girl, the latest in rising crimes against women in India despite the toughening of laws. District Magistrate Jitendera Singh said the group abducted the girl from Chatra, a village in eastern Jharkhand state, while she was attending a wedding ceremony on Thursday.
Read more: Second India teen raped, set on fire: police
Some of them allegedly raped her before letting her go home. After her parents reported the crime, village council leaders ordered the accused rapists to do 100 sit-ups and pay a 50,000 rupee (A$990) fine as punishment, according to the BBC. Enraged by the punishment, Mr. Singh said the suspects beat up the girl’s family members for complaining against them and burned the 16-year-old alive. Mr. Singh said police were searching for the main suspect in the case.
In the neighboring Odisha state, a 14-year-old girl was allegedly gang-raped in the district of Sambalpur. “The girl [in the district of Sambalpur] was first assaulted by one person and later by four others in different locations,” Police Inspector Jay Rashmi Sethi told
Reports of sexual violence have been steadily rising in India despite the national outrage that followed the fatal gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi in 2012. The incidents come less than a month after India approved the death penalty for the rape of girls younger than 12, and increased the prison term for the rape of older girls and women.
The approval of the death penalty for child rapists came after a particularly gruesome rape and murder of a Muslim girl in Jammu and Kashmir state, who was kidnaped, sedated and gang-raped in a Hindu temple. Reported rape cases in India have climbed steadily in recent years to about 40,000 in 2016. Many more cases are believed to go unreported. Child rape accounts for about 40 percent of the reported cases.
Read more: Violence, rape and other fear mongering tactics used by Indian forces…
Atrocities against women have been on the rise in India over the past couple decades. Sexual harassment is a daily occurrence in the lives of common women. Therefore, women empowerment is something that all Indian government’s claim they want. However, promising is one thing and fulfilling is quite another.
A 16-year-old girl was burned alive by a man accused of her rape, while a 17-year-old girl remains in a critical condition after being set alight by a suspect who allegedly said he wanted to marry her.
In September 2017, Authorities in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has ordered an inquiry after police beat female university students protesting against an alleged sexual assault. Outrage grew after video footage of the beating at the leading Banaras Hindu University (BHU) went viral.
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In a related incident, a two-judge bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court awarded bail to three law students from the elite Jindal Global Law School who had been convicted by a lower court in March for blackmailing and gang-raping a fellow student. The court labeled the victim as “promiscuous”. The young woman was castigated for drinking beer, smoking, taking drugs, keeping condoms in her room and not confiding in her parents that she was being abused.
The most recent statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau show that crimes against women have increased 34% in the past four years. India has been designated the worst country for women in the G20 nations even lower than Saudi Arabia.