Selective outrage stays norms while crimes against women rise
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Utkal University Faculty suspended after sexual harassment allegation by female student
By Pradeep Kumar Panda
Bhubaneswar, September 19: An assistant professor at Odisha’s Utkal University, a leading state-run institution, was suspended Wednesday following allegations of sexually harassing a female student in his office last month.
The suspension came after an internal complaints committee submitted a report based on the woman’s complaint. The committee had been formed to investigate the allegations. The professor did not respond to calls or messages seeking comment, The Indian Express reported.
According to an order issued by the registrar on Wednesday: “In pursuance of the order dated September 18 of the Vice Chancellor, Utkal University, which follows the recommendation of the Internal Complaint Committee probing the alleged harassment of a girl student, (the professor) is hereby placed under suspension with immediate effect.”
The committee, made up of university faculty and an external legal expert, held several meetings and gathered evidence before finalising its report. According to a senior university official, the report found prima facie evidence of molestation against the assistant professor. The professor has been suspended and ordered not to leave the campus without the Vice Chancellor’s permission.
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In her complaint to the department’s sexual harassment cell, the student said the incident took place at around 2 pm on August 16. She had gone to collect a book with the assistant professor’s permission when he allegedly molested her. She claimed he asked her to sit close to him, touched her inappropriately, and held her waist when she tried to resist. As she attempted to escape, she alleged he pulled her legs and made inappropriate comments, telling her not to disclose the incident.
The student said she was “mentally broken” after the incident and had not spoken to anyone about it, including her parents, as her mother was unwell. She requested the case be handled with “utmost confidentiality and empathy” and pledged full cooperation in the investigation.
On September 17, Odisha Governor Raghubar Das, the university’s chancellor, intervened, directing the Vice Chancellor to submit a factual and action taken report.
According to the Crime in India 2022: Statistics Volume 1, the annual report by the National Crime Records Bureau, there was a 4% rise in the registered crimes against women in 2022, compared to the previous year. In absolute numbers, the total number of registered crimes against women was 4,45,256 cases in 2022. Of these, 31.4% were registered under “cruelty by husband or his relatives,” 19.2% were “kidnapping and abduction of women,” 18.7% were of “assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty,” and 7% were cases under “rape.” Similarly, there was a significant rise of 8.7% in crimes against children in 2022, which amounts to 1,62,449 registered cases.
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Among these, 45.7% of cases constituted of “kidnapping and abduction” and 39.7% of cases were under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012. The rise in crime rates registered is higher in the metropolitan cities.
It is important to note, as the report also cautions, that these are just the cases registered with the police. There could be a vast gap between the actual crimes committed and those reported.
A time-bound justice and sensitive judiciary are fundamental to fight back this grim reality and restore the sense of trust in society. Despite the efforts from civil society and the legal community for judicial reforms, the ground reality is dismal and it hardly comes under media scrutiny.
The study by the Supreme Court, titled the State of the Judiciary: A Report on Infrastructure, Budgeting, Human Resources and ICT (2023), states that there are over five crore pending cases in India dealt with by 20,580 judges across the Supreme Court, high courts, and district courts. The report found that more than 42.9% of courtrooms have been under construction for over three years.
There are a staggering number of issues plaguing the judiciary when it comes to having a basic infrastructure in place. Some of these are serious shortages of judicial support staff, vacancies of judges, non-compliance with the recruitment timelines and extreme delays, lack of courtrooms, washrooms, poor representation, limited digitisation, e-filing facilities and videoconferencing facilities and so on.
A strong and sound judiciary is not simply “strong punishment” or a “strong law” but the whole mechanism of the justice delivery system. Additionally, there are challenges of pronouncing judgments fearlessly without the threats of mobs, media trials, or political pressures.
In the last decade or so, all discussions on social justice, socio-economic issues, and human rights have disappeared from the mainstream media. Today, any attempt at critique is seen as “anti-religion,” “anti-national” or “anti-establishment.”
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The government’s focus on women’s empowerment through schemes, cash transfers, or nutritional programmes, though important, becomes the dominant national and regional narrative of change. And hence, when incidents like the release of convicted gang rapists in the Bilkis Bano case, abuse of a large number of women in Manipur in the ongoing conflict, and the battle by women wrestlers against the ex-chief of the Wrestling Federation of India happens, the media-created bubble of good governance and toxic positivity bursts.
The public outrage derails this image-management wagon dragged on for too long by the divisive media.
On 9 August 2024, the nation was shocked, yet again, when the news of a woman doctor’s brutal rape and murder in a hospital in Kolkata hit the headlines.
As the details of the gruesome nature of the crime and the working conditions of doctors were reported in the media, the citizens and resident doctors across the country erupted in protest. They were right in doing so.
Their colleague, a fellow citizen, was assaulted and killed in the most dehumanising manner. A civic police volunteer was arrested immediately as a suspect. For many years now, doctors have been demanding greater safety measures in hospitals as they are often subjected to violent attacks, while on duty.
But what happened on 9 August 2024 was a moment of a complete breakdown of their patience. There are now more resident doctors speaking up against the abusive work environments where ragging, bullying, and harassment by colleagues, seniors, professors and patient’s relatives, are rampant.
The issue today, however, is not limited to the poor working conditions alone but the persistence of structural abuse faced by women and children all over the country.
Two equally brutal cases of sexual abuse, and in one case murder of Dalit children, were reported in the week following the Kolkata case. In Muzaffarpur, Bihar, a 14-year-old Dalit girl child was abducted, allegedly raped and murdered by the middle-aged prime accused who had threatened the victim’s family for turning down his marriage proposal.
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In Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, an assistant development officer of the agriculture department raped a 10-year-old Dalit child in her own house. As we read in utter shock and write about more such cases, parents in Badlapur, Maharashtra, have hit the streets in protest against the sexual abuse of two children on their own school premises.
A hospital, a home, a neighbourhood, a school, or a workplace, all these are supposed to be sites of care, safety, shelter and growth, surrounded by the “known” people. The knee-jerk reaction of the institutions and governments is to restrict the movement of women at certain times and spaces.
The subject of sensitisation across genders against patriarchal cultures and practices gets a footnote mention. There are, of course, efforts at the individual level towards gender sensitisation but they need to be supported by large-scale and consistent government, institutional and community interventions so that gender-sensitive education and culture become mainstream and are not restricted to a one-time workshop or a campaign.
We have conveniently avoided the most important discussion about why these cases keep occurring and what measures have been taken to prevent them. How does the culture of impunity, selective outrage, and complete silence when the accused is a powerful person enable misogynist violence and exploitation?
We will yet again focus all the attention on a few rotten apples when the problem lies in the whole poisoned orchard that needs uprooting.
The outbreak of the frustrated public emotion, as seen in Kolkata and Badlapur, is also a desperate need to break away from this media-created echo chamber that people knew did not represent their reality, their experiences, and their worst fears.
Safety and freedom to live as fearless citizens is a collective effort; no one can be excluded from it. This can only be shaped by a larger philosophical commitment against patriarchy and all kinds of violence rooted in the idea of superior–inferior or dominant–subordinate. It requires a humanitarian vision and action and not a majoritarian impulse that bullies the vulnerable and marginalised people into further silence.
When politics is reduced to gathering crowds of followers on non-issues, display of eloquent rhetoric, whipping up emotions through provocative speeches or indulging in huge expenditures, it translates into precarious living conditions for the citizens.
The real progressive politics of development involves the hard work of transforming the unequal and oppressive social order. This work is slow, gets no instant validation, and involves no high-decibel arguments but listening and questioning through conversations; it has no theatrics and spectacle but gradual conscientisation.
It is a daily routine work informed by a dramatic vision and radical commitment for a just, democratic society.
When a woman rises up in dignity, everything around her rises with her. In a world where discrimination against women is still rampant, it’s important that we continue to raise our voice against such heinous crime. We should remind ourselves every day that we are human being, and that dignity of women should always be upheld.
No house, no society, no state, no country has ever progressed by ruining dignity of women. We can never progress as a society where crime against women is rampant and increasing day by day.
Conviction rate in these crimes are abysmally low as perpetrator has nexus with administration and gets away even though everybody knows he has committed the crime. Such incident should be stopped. We as citizens should raise our voice and do not sit silent being mere spectator. Its time to act and raise strongest voice and stand in solidarity with victims.
(Opinions expressed in the article solely belong to the author)
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