Friday 19 April 2013

A little too nice or a little too stupid?

I'm not really sure where to begin. Would you be, if you wanted to vent about the pathetic case of a 5-year-old girl raped, mutilated and left for dead with the police later bribing the victim's father to keep mum about it? As if all this was not enough, a protester was slapped by a cop for demanding justice. Furious as I am about all of this, I am beginning to wonder seriously about another aspect of the case altogether.

The police are supposedly on the 'lookout' for the perpetrator who seems to have fled the scene. I can understand if the authorities are operating on just a hunch. But the child was found with her throat slit, lying in a pool of her own blood in the locked apartment of a man with a criminal record. Is it too much to ask to release his photo to the press? The victims of a crime, their families and neighbors are not spared by the media but sure, let's cover the face of the pervert to preserve his standing in society. We could really learn a thing or two from countries like the US (at least a few states in the US) where a registered sex offender is required by law to make his neighbors aware of his unenviable status.

At this point, I know I am up against at least two arguments:

(i) Given how sentimental (read volatile) Indians can be, the probability of the accused of a heinous crime being identified and calmly handed over to the authorities is next to zero.

(ii) There are bound to be some nutjobs who would welcome even negative publicity and would therefore do anything just to be 'famous' (yes, I've actually heard this argument before).

My rebuttal to these points:

(i) Would you rather others be victimized by the perp-in-hiding while the police are busy bribing the family of the initial victim? I, for one, think it's ridiculous to have the end result favoring a criminal, no matter how noble your intentions.

(ii) Why not follow through and make sure those nutjobs also understand what punishment lies in wait for them at the end of the road? In any case, I think the number of people deterred by the threat of certain punishment far outweighs the number of people who would do anything just to become 'famous'.

I don't really know how I got started thinking along this tangent today, but now that's it out there, I wonder if more people have thought about this and drawn the same conclusion I have.

7 comments:

  1. Yep, I've never understood how the human rights of murderers and rapists takes precedence over the rights of the victims. SO frustrating!

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    1. The "even criminals have human rights" argument is getting really old. I say give them their human rights in a solitary cell.

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  2. The fury with which you have written this piece is evident and it is rightly justified, but sadly the quote of yours "we learning a thing or two from countries like US" is wrong.

    While there are a lot of things we can learn from US this is not one of them and the solution you provided is also not exactly effective atleast from what I interpreted from the data.

    While India has around 22,000 cases of rape the US with a much smaller population than us has around 84,000. Even if we consider only 1 out of every 4 cases have been reported this is not a good statistic to recommend us to learn from the USA regarding how to handle this scenario.

    The point that I am trying to make here is there is no one straight measure or solution to tackle this problem. What we have to realise is this problem like the multitude of problems we face at present in our country is a result of a flaws that are one par in number with problems that we have in our society. Evolving from these flaws is the only solution.

    A fellow blogger and procrastinator

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    1. Hi Siva! Thanks for elucidating with data. Like you said, this post was the outcome of a moment of fury. I definitely agree that mirroring another country's policies and laws is definitely not the solution. Although I do wish the authorities would wake up to the fact that measures to alert the general public about the names and faces of convicted rapists cannot take a back seat anymore.

      On another note, I'm fighting the spirits of procrastination as hard as I can :)

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    2. I empathise with you regarding procrastinating because my last post on my blog was in OCT 2012... I hope you win this fight against the "spirits" of procrastination. :P

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  3. Such criminals should not just get away .. hope some change in policies and laws come soon !

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  4. solitary punishment is too mild for such a barbaric criminal... 'an eye for an eye' too wud not be enuf... he shud be made to suffer in more heinous a manner...
    how traumatic it must be for the wee one... physically, emotionally, mentally and in every which way... she has been totally scarred for life... can she ever be whole again? will she survive this ordeal in the first place?
    yes, the perpetrator of this dastardly act must most definitely have his mug shots displayed prominently all over the country, blocking off any escape route... its time the laws of our country were rewritten and law enforcement agencies were held responsible for negligence and brought to book along with the criminal...praying for the well being of the child and for the parents to have the strength to go thru this ordeal...

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