Girl Raped on a Motorbile Video
A woman is raped every thirteen minutes in Republic of india. As the state of affairs reaches desperate proportions, one police commissioner thinks there might be an reply. In the city of Jaipur, Rajasthan, a new, all-female police team, mounted on motorbikes, aims to keep women safe on the streets. Is it working? ELLE finds out.
In one case Nirmala notices him, she springs into action. Sat on the wall outside a busy shopping mall in Jaipur, north Republic of india, he looks so ordinary: rucksack slung over one shoulder, a pair of office-set grey trousers. Only now panic begins to wash over his face. Joined past 3 fellow policewoman, Nirmala closes in.
'Does she look like a child to y'all?' asks Nirmala, anger bubbles upwards in her vocalism.
Another officeholder, Premlata, takes the human past his arm and escorts him to Gaurav Tower constabulary station, just across the road. The room is small – only a bed, a fan and a small desk-bound fit inside. The shutters are wide open up but the window is barricaded with metallic bars.
He tries to apologise, but it's too late.
'When you harass a girl, do you realise how much it disturbs her mind?' questions Nirmala.
In any other circumstance, this man might have walked costless. He appeared silently behind a adult female, tapped her on the shoulder and offered her a balloon. He badgered her, wouldn't get out her alone, just aught that bad happened, right? Information technology's meliorate to avoid making a scene, correct?
Not today. And not with Jaipur'south all-female police squad on duty.
'It doesn't matter – if you're troubling women, then you're doing something incorrect,' says Premlata. 'If we take a step the first fourth dimension something happens, such incidents won't happen again.'
She and Nirmala are 2 of 52 policewomen who patrol the streets protecting women, preventing crimes like harassment (known colloquially equally 'eve-teasing'), rape, molestation and assault. No matter how big or small, every such crime confronting women is taken seriously.
Only they're not only an all-female person squad: these women are mounted bikers. In pairs, they zig-zag across the metropolis on motorbikes, interrupting crime when they meet it taking identify.
'We're on the route in direct touch with the women – and we can accept direct action for them,' explains Nirmala. 'The cases nosotros register are handled by the police station no matter what. Then the power is in our easily. If y'all've harassed a women in anyway, you will be arrested.'
A woman is raped in Bharat every 13 minutes. In 2016, half dozen women were gang-raped every twenty-four hour period; a helpmate was murdered for dowry every 69 minutes.
Five years after the infamous Delhi-gang rape, in which 23-year-old Jyoti Singh died later on beingness attacked by six men on a bus, women say India is clearly still dangerous. Read any newspaper or website and it's a heartbreakingly countless stream of abuse – stories cascade out with shocking fervour, the latest 'brutal' rape dissected and discussed so much the violence becomes almost normalised.
In contempo months, a series of cases shocked the land once again. From the rape, torture and murder of an eight-year-old daughter in the state of Jammu to ii teenage girls who were raped and then set on burn down in Jharkhand – the issue of sexual violence is firmly back on the national agenda.
As with the events half dozen years agone, the attacks accept given rise to protests . In April, thousands of people took to the streets all over India and prompted demands for stricter rape laws.
So what, if anything, is the solution? Law forces beyond the country are hoping they've found an reply: all-female squads. Launched in New Delhi, Jaipur and Udaipur, they're part of an effort to tackle incidences of sexual assault.
In Delhi, the 'Raftaar' (or 'Speed') team take been armed with guns, pepper spray, stun guns and body cameras, and guard crowded areas of the city on motorbikes (they can zip downwards narrow streets apace where sexual assault often takes identify).
Launched in May 2017, the pioneering unit in Jaipur, Rajasthan, patrols areas where women are more likely to be, such as jitney stops, universities and parks. Each adult female on the squad completed a month-long grooming plan, which included martial arts, fettle, meditation, learning sections of the constabulary needed in the field and horse-riding.
'We knew the lady patrolling units might face men bigger than them and it could human activity as psychological deterrent,' explains Gaurav Srivastava, the Additional Commissioner of Police spearheading the projection. 'So the purpose of the horse riding was to testify them with the right kind of approach and mindset you tin control something fifty-fifty more than powerful than yourself.'
Dressed in a bluish 2-piece, with a baton hanging loosely off their dorsum pocket, the women look intimidating– and that's entirely the point. The squads originally wore khaki uniforms, like the rest of law in Rajasthan, merely were swapped out for a darker tone half dozen months later. In a lodge dominated by men, the women needed a way to stand out – to show anybody they meant concern.
'Their appearance is quite awe-inspiring,' says Srivastava, 'and their mere presence in public is both a deterrence and a lark for offenders.'
28-year-onetime Jhooma Meena agrees. She joined the police force nine years ago.
'When I wear the compatible, I get confident,' she says. 'Before this I would accept been agape to get outside, I would have been scared and nervous to go out my house. At present at that place's no reluctance or fear. Men don't stare at united states. When they encounter us in the uniform, they don't look at us in the wrong way.'
Not only practise the all-female squads prevent harassment from taking place, just their literal presence on the street reassures women. Rape still carries a huge stigma in Bharat – many women are scared to report a crime due to the generally male police force. Many more deal with officers who don't take sexual assault crimes seriously.
'I think women do feel more comfortable approaching u.s. and sharing their problems,' says Nirmala.
In the first xxx days, Jaipur's team received the highest numbers of sexual harassment complaints. I year later on, the team have dealt with 256 incidences, nearly i quarter of which lead to arrests.
Then far, Jaipur locals seem happy with the police's effort to protect women.
'We feel safety when we see the female patrols around,' says 32-twelvemonth-old Sheetal Rathore, who watched the man beingness carted off outside the shopping mall. Her iii-year-daughter, Devanshe, watched the whole thing, also.
'Women understand the trouble more than men simply you lot can't really trust anyone,' she continues. 'I e'er leave the house with someone – like my husband or brother – because men won't spare me because I'm married. These people don't even spare petty girls.'
Herein lies the biggest criticism of the all-female squads. While locals say the officers are doing a good task on the ground, many have pointed out information technology's not a long-term solution. They practise little to adjourn other systemic problems — similar poor police investigations in the aftermath of sexual assaults, and men'southward mental attitude towards women.
After the 2012 Delhi gang rape, the government promised a flurry of modify: to speed up rape trials, provide harsher penalties, including the capital punishment in extreme cases, and a law against stalking.
The willingness of women to report sexual crimes indicates a significant shift in attitude (and tin exist seen in the numbers, crimes confronting women surged 83% from 2007 to 2016) nonetheless many feel that beneath the surface, piddling has changed.
At the end of 2016, there were 133,000 rape cases pending trial. In the UK, doctors use a standard rape kit to collect blood and urine samples – and acquit this out in DNA labs. Neither the kits or labs defended to rape exist in India, though the authorities did commit to implementing both by July 2018. In that location's as well no DNA database, meaning you lot tin can't match new Dna taken from a crime to an offender already recorded in the registry.
Added to this, the conviction rate of people arrested for rape remains at 25%. The United kingdom, for comparison, doesn't off-white better: in 2016, only 11.2% of rape cases ended in a conviction. Withal the investigations carried out past the Indian constabulary, says humans rights lawyer Vrinda Grover, are 'dreadful, bias, unscientific, and very, very shoddy.'
She continues: 'For women and girls in India, our lives don't thing, our dignity doesn't matter, our freedom doesn't matter. We alive as half citizens with no rights, with fear instilled and haunting our every move.
'Women are seeking justice – and that'due south tremendous – simply from the station right up to the court room, there is institutional bias confronting usa. The law have assured that no matter what yous practice, there volition be no questions asked.'
'So one [all-female] team in three metropolitans cities of Republic of india – what good will that do?'
She's right, and it'south a flaw the law in Jaipur will readily acknowledge.
'52 policewomen is not enough to cover the entire metropolis of Jaipur,' says Srivastava, the Additional Commissioner, 'and lots of places are yet uncovered.'
They're aiming to double the numbers, but information technology'southward however a way off. And while Jaipur has four law stations (of 60) specifically dedicated to women'south problems, there aren't always enough female person officers to staff them.
This is down to many Indian women rarely seeing the police as a viable career option – if they're able to choose, they'll pick nursing or instruction. Less than x% of women make upward the force in Jaipur, despite the government setting a xxx% reservation.
'The mindset that only men can exist police officers still exists,' says Sanjay Agarwal, Jaipur's Police Commissioner and most senior officer. 'It exists not only in the public but within the police force, besides.
'So the all-female person squad breaks the glass ceiling. They're contained, confident, well-trained, and we push them up,' he says.
The consequence? Women showtime adapting to the role – they don't believe they're less or 2nd in anyway because, says Agarwal, of grade they're non. They undergo the aforementioned rigorous grooming as the men do; there's no relaxing of the rules.
It's articulate both men and women demand training on gender problems. Agarwal recounts a story about a battered wife reporting her married man to the police, just once she arrives at the station a male cop simply replies: 'what's then wrong well-nigh that? I as well crush my wife'.
'That actually happened,' says Agarwal. 'For [some of] the officers, it's not an offence. So women are victims in their own homes, and they come to the police station and get a victim once more. We are living in a club that is bias confronting women. And that inequality is perpetrated by men – that is a fact. That's why nosotros need less women backside the desk, and more than on the frontlines.'
Still, women like Nirmala and Jhooma are condign office models.
'I grew up in a conservative village and I'm the offset woman from in that location to go a job,' explains Jhooma.
In rural areas, girls are not educated. They're typically married off young – aged 14 or fifteen – and 'that's why women don't move forward.'
But Jaipur'southward all-female squad are challenging the condition quo. They're visiting schools and telling young girls they're merely as, if not more, powerful than the boys.
'We tell the girls: "expect, you can patrol just similar whatever guy." And then someday my daughters will get out, and when they see women like us on the street, they won't be afraid.'
More importantly, women are no longer willing to be placidity. In Delhi, every bit thousands of protestors took to the streets, the crowd was chock with teenagers and twenty-somethings demanding justice. Their strong, strident chants heard minutes before you're struck with a sea of 'Punish The Guilty' and 'Finish Protecting The Rapists' signs.
'We need to call rape out for what it is – a hate offense,' says 27-yr-old Preeti Gulati, who attended the protest with her friends. A PHD student who grew up in Delhi, she almost rolls her eyes at the question of what needs to change.
'Republic of india doesn't do enough to protect women, but no country in the globe does. Patriarchy has existed for 2000 years. Raise your men better.'
Far from beingness victims, Indian women are not giving up – they've taken accuse of their lives and decline to play past guild's shaming rules. They're causing a scene whether yous like information technology or not.
As Grover says: 'Nobody is sitting silent, nobody is accepting this.'
Translation by Nikita Mandhani. Boosted help from Rekha Singh.
'The Warriors' is a yr-long reporting project by ELLE and the Fuller Project for International Reporting, funded by the European Journalism Eye via its Innovation in Development Reporting Grant Programme.
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Source: https://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/a22099543/female-squad-india-rape/
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