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A 15-year-old girl in UP was allegedly gang-raped, brutalized and strangled before being abandoned after perpetrators presumed she is dead!
Trigger Warning: Rape, Violence, Murder attempt.
Even as the world came together less than a week ago to recognize and celebrate International Women’s Day, we woke up to an utterly distressing piece of news in the paper this morning. The title was enough to shake me out of any idealistic stupor that the entire Women’s Day mood had temporarily brought on.
A young girl had been raped and beaten to within an inch of her life in one of the country’s most populated cities, a city that also boasts of being a prime travel destination. Shaking my head in distress, I wondered.
After everything we’ve seen, everything we’ve learnt over the years, how could I have been naïve enough, stupid enough to forget, even for a day?
As usual, the details of the article were even more disturbing. “Multiple wounds….brutally raped…throttled…left to die!”
Enough to make me want to throw up as I tried to fathom how this girl could have even survived such an ordeal. Then, over the next couple of hours, the initial feeling of shock abated, admittedly giving way to a hopelessness, a feeling of futility.
It must have been the realization that despite all the work, all the noise, the outrage, despite everything, these crimes were still rampant. Then, of course, the anger took over as it should. Seething, I wondered; How could they hurt her? Why did they do it? When will this country be safe for women?
Why are we women being targeted with such heinous crimes?
I have, in fact, written about this before as well. Why is the need, the desire to hurt, to silence, to destroy, and so much more when the victim of a crime is a woman?
It’s as though anything, or even everything, she does, is enough to bring on a sort of inhuman rage in her tormentors, a rage that makes them want to silence her, once and for all.
How dare she fight back?
How dare she assert her rights on her own body?
How dare she not accept the supremacy of the perpetrators of a crime that is so heinous that it is difficult to imagine how she even lived through it! Call it what you will, but this truly is the reality of this horrific situation.
A mindset, a sick mindset that wants to hurt, crush and destroy someone simply because she happens to be a woman.
We all know that every time something like this happens, a bleakness, an exhaustion takes over. But despite the feeling of exhaustion, despite the hopelessness, despite everything, we have to keep at it.
We have to keep expressing anger, we have to keep getting shocked, and we have to keep fighting. We can’t afford to forget or give up. There’s no time or place for short memories.
No way. No more.
This is an ongoing story, the article will be updated with further development in the case. Till 13-2-203, 8 am, the accused in this case have been taken into police custody.
Image source: kckate16, from Joopiko, free and edited on CanvaPro
Rrashima is a senior corporate analyst with over 20 years of experience in the corporate sector. She is also a prolific writer, novelist and poet and her articles, stories and poems are regularly published in read more...
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