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POLICE IN NEW Delhi have announced a sharp jump in sex crimes reported in the Indian capital since the fatal gang-rape of a student and attributed the rise to more confidence among victims to report complaints.
“More women are shedding their inhibitions and registering complaints with us. After the December 16 gang-rape, nobody in Delhi wants to brush crime under the carpet,” Deepak Mishra, law and order commissioner, told AFP.
There was a 148 percent leap in rape accusations lodged with police to 359 incidents between January 1 and March 24 this year from the same period in 2012 and a 590 percent rise in molestation reports to 794, police said.
The brutal attack on a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a bus in New Delhi on December 16 that resulted in her death nearly two weeks later sparked nationwide outrage and prompted parliament to toughen penalties for sex crimes.
Though gang-rapes and sexual harassment are common in India, the case touched a nerve and led to a flood of criticism about the treatment of women in society.
“Cases of sex crimes have shot up in 2013 because we are following a strict rule of not ignoring a single incident of crime,” said Mishra, who is responsible for crime prevention in the capital.
Before the December gang-rape, Mishra said, Delhi police had a policy in many instances of investigating incidents before registering a formal case, leading to complaints by women that authorities were turning a blind eye to sex crimes.
But now “the instruction is clear — every crime incident should be recorded”, said Mishra.
The city has a burgeoning population of at least 16 million and has long had a reputation of being the country’s “rape capital” as it records the highest number of rapes annually.
In 2012 there were 700 rapes reported in New Delhi, a 23 percent rise from the previous year, police said.
Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association, a rights group, also attributed the sharp jump in sex cases in New Delhi to more confidence among women to register complaints.
“They are more open to using the word ‘rape’ as before it was considered too much a shameful word to utter” for fear of being stigmatised in sexually conservative India, she told AFP.
At the same time, Krishnan noted that while Indian authorities have announced a string of measures to help women feel safer “incidents of sex crimes are not decreasing”.
Earlier this month, a Swiss cyclist was allegedly gang-raped in central Madhya Pradesh state and a British tourist in Agra jumped off a hotel balcony fearing she was going to be sexually attacked.
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Formerly the most stable state in the Middle-East. Hundreds of thousands dead and fundamental islamists set to capitalize on it. All because they decided to talk about pricing oil in Euro instead of the US dollar.
Truly terrifying what you can do with public opinion and a large military budget.
They’ve had a horrible last 50 years. First Saddam, now this. Terrible.
Re R H Beige Lark.
Well said. Libya was invaded for the same reason. It was going to take oil payments in anything, commodities, gold, euro etc. The threat to the Petrodollar was too much. I’m afraid Iran will go the same way unless they start taking payments in dollars again for their oil.
The US is a country teetering on the brink financially and the last thing they want is any upstart threatening to stop using Petrodollars. I believe the US government knows it is close to the abyss and hence the Sandy Hook massacre and Boston bombing events which have been orchestrated and planned to take more rights away from citizens, especially attempt to get high powered weapons away from people with subsequent pre planned legislation.
Libya actually had an excellent way of ending debt in African countries, they were about to introduce an African gold standard that countries would have to use to pay for African commodities
Couple of weeks later Libya is no more and the other African leaders are put back in their place
Gaddafi actually had some very bright ideas to make the middle east a very financially stable region, unfortunately it involve a threat to the petroldollar. If Libya and the others involve put their plan into action it would have put the dollar into a early grave by showing it’s true overwashed value. But hey they showed us that Libya, afgan and Iraq were evil countries that were a threat to mankind. We found the true hero’s in the middleeast like Saudi Arabia were it’s traditional to stone a woman to for wearing a dress that exposes flesh.
Sandy hook was orchestrated?! What a despicable comment!
You mean the same Iraq that gassed their own civilians? Or the same Libya which was trying to establish a modern empire of its own by invading and trying to annex Mali?
Rose-tinted glasses work both ways.
Seoirse, you are reaching a low with your comments. You are reading from the same script as b Lowe.
Niall, so if a African country receives gold for commodities what happens then? Please elaborate? There is a reason why the gold standard was dropped. Not every country has reserves of gold so how would they trade with Africa?
Must make a correction, I was referring to Libyan expansionism in Chad, not any involvement in Mali.
Re Niall.
You are exactly right with the gold dinar system Gaddafi was close to implementing.
The French President st the time, President Sarkozy, called it the greatest threat on history to the financial existence of mankind(wherein mankind for Sarkozy was France and a handful of other Western countries).
Imagine a system that was one of the greatest threats to mankind as described by an imperialist and it received zero coverage in Western media outlets.
Ah yes, the great legacy of the US/UK unprovoked illegal invasion and the papers still play the pipers tune.
A recent survey on the UK found the majority of people think fewer than 10,000 have died in Iraq since the invasion. Good to see Western media is giving an unbiased and objective accounting of Iraq over the years.
How can George Bush look in the mirror with all the murders and killings he has caused. He should be strung up and locked away for life and charged with war crimes!!! It breaks my heart every time I read about this :(
Sunni and Shia Muslims where killing each other centuries before anybody ever heard of George Bush or even America for that matter.
Re Al Shamen.
Yes, your point is valid but it is an inconsequential one.
The point is as a result of US stupidity this has been allowed to fester and there is an abundance of weapons available for these guys mow since General Petraeus started to arm these guys.
Iraq has always been awash with weapons.Apparently most households have access to an AK47.
Most of the weapons Al Qaeda use are Eastern Bloc.America has a lot to answer for but you cannot blame them for a centuries old sectarian feud that predates the foundation of that country.
Al Shamen – The US is awash with weapons too. Apparently most households have access to something that shoots bullets and they want to keep it that way. People get killed there in their droves on a daily basis and their human rights record is frankly appalling. There has also been civil war, sectarian strife and effective apartheid in the US within the last century. It has also engaged in criminal foreign wars. Again it is an irrelvancy to what has been said here.
Nobody has blamed the US for there having been age-old sectarianism in Iraq – though the CIAs involvement in keeping various factions at war is legendary – but people are right to expect the US to answer for its actions in recent times and to expect some sort of defence of those actions without it pulling in excuses like “there was always trouble so we can be excused of what we did to them”.
Well it was America who formed and funded the Al Queda to help them against the Russians, so America does have alot to answer for.
Democracy, don’t ya just love it! They do!
Every dog on the street knows the invasion was based on utter lies and a direct consequence of those lies is one and half million people dead……..spreading democracy ?? spreading death and destruction !!
Freedom!
Well Mr jingles freedom is what we have but when I look around all I see is people trapped in financial pain, there is a big problem with the system
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