Delhi Student’s Rape Mirrors New
Delhi
Leadership’s Rape of India, say Indian Minorities
SAN
FRANCISCO, Jan. 8, 2013 - The murder of Jyoti Singh Pandey, the New Delhi
college student who was kidnapped, gang-raped, and died late last month,
represents the treatment of India by its politicians, said a human rights group
for Indian minorities on Tuesday.
“Thugs like
Ms. Pandey’s murderers mirror the behavior of New Delhi’s leadership,” said
Bhajan Singh, Founding Director of US-based Organization for Minorities of
India (OFMI). “The Indian State habitually promotes instigators of full-scale
massacres to the highest political offices. From Narendra Modi to Sumedh Saini
and L. K. Advani to Kamal Nath, politicians who use rape, torture, and murder
are rewarded with positions of greater and greater power. When India’s rulers
are role models for sadism, they can hardly expect the citizenry to display a
superior level of morality.”
Modi, Chief
Minister of Gujarat, directed police to stand down as rioters systematically
massacred nearly 2,000 Muslims in 2002. Saini, Director General of Police in
Punjab, led death squads against Sikhs in the 1990s. Advani, a senior leader of
the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party and former Deputy Prime Minister,
oversaw the 1992 destruction of the historical Babri Mosque and massacre of
over 1,000 Muslims in resultant riots. Nath, Union Cabinet Member for Urban
Development, distributed weapons and ordered the murder of Sikhs during the
1984 Delhi Pogrom.
“Protesters
who are rightly furious at the atrocious treatment of Ms. Pandey are demanding
the death penalty for her six attackers,” remarked Bhajan Singh. “But where is
the justice for Christians raped in Orissa in 2008, Muslims raped in Gujarat in
2002, Sikhs raped in Delhi in 1984, or Dalits raped on a daily basis? There is
none because the Indian State is in the business, not of justice, but of
keeping itself in business.”
Nun Sister
Meena Lalita Barwa was gang-raped during anti-Christian riots in Orissa. She
survived, but was paraded half-naked past a group of police officers who
“ignored her and talked in a ‘very friendly’ manner to her attackers.” After
anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat, a Citizen’s Initiative reported “the most bestial
forms of sexual violence – including rape, gang rape, mass rape.” In her
article “Genocide in Gujarat,” anthropologist Angana Chatterji wrote: “Violence
took place within sight of the local police stations.... Police officers often
refused to come to the aid of Muslims, or took active part in the violence, to
the point of shooting and striking at Muslims as they ran from the mobs.”
The
humiliation of Sikh women during the 1984 Delhi Pogrom was one of the most
extensive acts of ethnically targeted abuse in Indian history. In its report,
“Twenty Years of Impunity,” rights group Ensaaf documented atrocities like the
rape of Gurdip Kaur. A mob killed her husband and three of her sons, gang-raped
her in front of her youngest son, killed him, and then left her to tell the
tale. Many other women, reports Ensaaf, “were raped in front of their families.
The rapists then either took the women home with them or left them naked in the
streets.” Members of Parliament such as Nath were witnessed offering cash
bounties to kill Sikhs, but none were ever prosecuted.
Although the
Pandey case has received significant publicity, recent headlines reveal similar
assaults on Dalits — the outcastes of Indian society — are a near daily
occurrence: Jan. 5 — “Minor Dalit girl raped in Punjab”; Jan. 3 — “Dalit girl
raped by engineering student in Haryana”; Jan. 2 — “Dalit alleges gangrape, no
action taken so far”; Dec. 19 — “8-year-old Dalit girl raped, killed in Bihar”;
Dec. 13 — “Dalit widow gang-raped; 4 arrested”; Dec. 8 — “Pregnant Dalit woman
gang-raped.”
A judicial
committee headed by J. S. Verma, a former Indian Supreme Court Chief Justice,
was appointed on December 22 to identify legislative solutions to the national
scourge of sexual assault. Among the solutions suggested so far are swifter
trials and tougher penalties for accused assailants.
Questioning
the sincerity of the Central Government’s proposed solutions, OFMI’s Press
Secretary Arvin Valmuci said: “The hypocrisy of the Indian State is beyond
belief. Witness the 1992 arrest of over 100 police officers for the arbitrary
detention, torture, and gang-rape of 18 female Dalits from Tamil Nadu. As for swift
trials, it took 19 years to convict anyone. As for tough penalties, the
harshest sentence was 10 years in prison while most received only two years.
When random thugs brutalize an innocent woman, the state talks tough. Yet when
the state itself commits mass atrocities against the most marginalized
inhabitants of South Asia, there is no justice.”
Torture,
claims OFMI, is standard practice for police in most circumstances.
Furthermore, a 2011 report by the organization entitled, “Demons Within: The
Systematic Practice of Torture by Indian Police,” states: “The practice of rape
as a form of torture by police officers is systemic and borders on universal in
their interactions with female detainees. Most tragically, many of those abused
by the police first approached the authorities to file a report of rape by
non-governmental assailants.”
The use of
torture is legal under Indian law, which provides no definition of torture or
prohibition of its practice. Torture and related abuses by Indian security
forces are actually protected by Section 197 of the Indian Criminal Procedure
Code, which grants immunity to any government official accused of committing a
criminal act in his official capacity. India has, to date, failed to ratify the
United Nations’ Convention Against Torture.
About OFMI:
Organization for Minorities of India was founded in 2006 to promote the
individual rights of Christians, Buddhists, Dalits, Muslims, Sikhs, and other
minorities of South Asian origin, particularly those marginalized by the Hindu
caste system. OFMI seeks to encourage secularism, the liberation of oppressed
peoples, preservation of human rights, and the equality of all humanity. Visit
OFMI online at www.OFMI.org.
Media
Inquiries:
Bhajan Singh
Founding
Director, OFMI
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