[More than 36,900 rapes were reported in India New Delhi
 |
Activists shout slogans in
for the men convicted in a rape case. (Bikas
Das/AP)
|
But police say a toy salesman entered the school on at least
four occasions, taking the child into a nearby room and raping her. He was
finally caught two years ago when the girl’s older sister saw him assaulting
the child and told Ojha.
More than 36,900 rapes were reported in India New Delhi
But three years after India
The police “spoke so rudely that they made us feel as if we were
the culprits,” said Ojha, 35. “They made us repeat what happened again and
again. They asked, ‘Why did your child wander off?’ ”
After the grueling questioning and medical examination, the family
walked three miles at 2 a.m. to get home, shivering on a
December night.
“We were afraid, confused and felt humiliated,” Ojha recalled.
In the two years since that night, other angry parents have protested online and on the streets,
demanding greater safety for their children in schools and public places.
In October, lawmaker Rajeev Chandrasekhar formed a coalition of
activists and began an online petition asking
Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make child safety a priority.
But many say that despite the increased activism, the system is
still broken.
Last week, a study of child-rape cases in New Delhi
The report’s analysis of verdicts between April and September
last year showed that only 1 in 6 cases resulted in conviction. Until October
2014, the national conviction rate
under the new law on child sexual abuse was just 2.4 percent.
In 67 percent of cases, the child victims gave up on the
trials, changed their statements or rescinded their complaints because of
threats from the families of those accused of sexually abusing children. About
28 percent of cases dragged on for longer than a year. The survey said
that children are often subjected to “inappropriate” questions by lawyers in
court.
“All our energies and focus seems to be on demanding and passing
harsher laws and harsher punishments,” said
Swagata Raha, senior legal researcher at the National Law School
Families of victims said that police are often callous. Ojha’s
daughter told the police that the accused wielded a knife. Police later found a
small knife in his room used for cutting vegetables.
“The policewoman asked us mockingly, ‘He frightened her with
this knife?’ ” Ojha recalled. “My wife answered, ‘Whether it is a knife
that cuts vegetables or cuts a goat, it is enough to scare a four-year-old
child.’ ”
The official numbers of child rapes, experts say, do not tell
the whole story. According to the government, 14 children — eight of them
girls — wentmissing every hour in 2013.
“They are not going missing because somebody wants to take them
to a mall or to the park. They are being sexually abused and exploited,” said
Bhuwan Ribhu, national secretary of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save Childhood
Movement).
Last month, a 13-year old girl was kidnapped by men in a car in New Delhi
Police say she was kept in a locked room and was raped by three
men repeatedly for two weeks. They shot her and threw her in a well, leaving
her for dead. But she survived.
“I had horrible nightmares for days after that,” she said. “I am
angry. I don’t want to remain silent. I want the men hanged to death.”
The police arrested two of the three men within days but failed
to follow guidelines of the new law. For three weeks, the police did not give
the child’s family a copy of the police complaint. The investigating officer
stopped taking phone calls from the girl’s father. And no counselor visited the
home, the family said.
“There is no sustained hand-holding or support for a majority of
children or the families,” said Yogita Chakraborty, an independent anti-rape
volunteer who is helping the teen. “The police don’t bother to tell them their
rights under the new law. The families are left to flounder.”
Obtaining financial compensation for victims is also difficult.
“In many cases, the family of the child victim falls into
economic hardship and is forced to move,” said Uzma Parveen, a counsellor with
Haq, an advocacy group.
Activist and lawyer Gaurav Bansal said that a judge “often
handles terror cases, underworld crime, narcotics as well as child sexual abuse
on the same day. Children come to court [and] see hardened criminals milling
around in handcuffs.”
Ojha said he almost gave up. He would take time off from work to
go to court, but often, the judge or the lawyer was absent, and the trial would
be postponed. Once, the suspect’s family threatened Ojha’s wife outside the
court.
His family would huddle in fear when mysterious strangers banged
on their door at midnight and threw stones on the tin roof.
Then four weeks ago, the verdict came. The judge sent the toy
salesman to prison for five years, and awarded Ojha’s daughter about $1,800.
But now he wants to leave the city and return to his farming
village where no one knows of the ordeal.
“The village school is not very good, but that is the price my
daughters have to pay for what that man did,” said Ojha, who came to New Delhi
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