May 14, Delhi: A 20-year-old call-centre worker was gang-raped for two hours in a moving car though the police was informed five minutes after the abduction. May 13, Jaipur: A 20-year-old working girl was almost raped by four young men after they saw her with two male friends. May 11, Jodhpur: A 47-year-old German tourist was picked up outside her hotel and raped by two autorickshaw drivers. April 21, Mumbai: A 17-year-old college student was raped in the afternoon by a policeman on duty inside a police post.

It is 2.15 a.m. After a long night of study, two girls step out of their rented suburban home for a quick bite at a busy crossing. Four men drive past in a car and try to pick them up. One of them escapes, throws a stone at the car, alerts a nearby dhaba owner, who in turn stops a motorcyclist. The motorcyclist approaches a passing pcr van, which flashes a warning on the wireless within five minutes. To no effect. In the car, one of the men grabs the 20-year-old student and call-centre employee, wields a pistol in her face and forces her to drink a sedative. For the next two hours, they take turns to rape the girl as they travel across five districts of the capital. They even switch cars and ask her where she wants to be dropped. She says: "From where you picked me up." They do, with one of the assailants Ajit Katiyar, a call-centre driver, all the while telling her to "relax". At 4.15 a.m., she is taken back, ironically just across the Delhi Police's Crimes Against Women cell office.

For long-time women's activist Brinda Karat, it is symptomatic of the total lawlessness in what has become the rape capital of the nation. "What is worse is the lack of outrage. That's what is wrong with our mistaken modernity, where you can wear the latest label in clothes but still regard women as property or a sex object." The dominant culture of Delhi, she says, is a contempt for a woman's person. But it is not restricted to Delhi-though according to the National Crime Records Bureau (ncrb), the capital accounts for over 30 per cent of rapes and abduction of women in urban India. In Mumbai last month, as the evening sun shone on the nation's most famous promenade, a drunk police constable sauntered out of a police post underneath the Marine Drive flyover with his pants still unzipped and not a sign of remorse on his face. Sunil Atmaram More, a police constable reprimanded 44 times in the past for minor issues, had just raped a 17-year-old college student who wanted to enrol in self-defence classes. His first words after the crime? "Jo ukhad sakte ho, ukhad lo." In Jaipur, a 20-year-old was almost gang-raped, while in Ahmedabad, a constable was arrested for attempting to rape an 18-year-old woman waiting to take a bus out of town at 3 a.m.

For women across India, fear is a constant companion and rape is the stranger they may have to confront at every corner, on any road, in any public place, at any hour. According to data collected by women's organisations, a woman is raped every half-hour somewhere in India. It is a terror that is increasingly being brought home to urban women, as they strike out on their own in search of economic and social independence. As the india today-Ac Nielsen-org-marg opinion poll shows shockingly, one in every two women feels unsafe in the top eight metros and mini-metros. Even 45 per cent males concede that women do not feel safe. Three in every four people feel that women should be careful of what they wear in public-surprisingly this includes even the single women interviewed. A ficci Ladies Organisation study of 3,519 working women in five cities earlier this year only highlights this threat perception: 60 per cent of them said they could be harassed anywhere in the city.

ATTACKING RAPE

The do's... Enrol for self-defence lessons. Always carry a Swiss knife, pepper spray or sockful of coins that can be used as a weapon. Women are entitled to legal counsel at a police station. So while lodging a report, insist on a legal representative. If there is a case of assault, molestation or rape, insist on examination by a woman doctor and also on a copy of the FIR and medical report. While travelling late at night, look out for suspicious people. Cultivate a support group that will look out for you and keep helpline numbers handy. If you are out alone with a man, inform the support group. ...and don'ts Don't talk to strangers. Avoid travelling alone as much as possible. Don't be distracted while travelling alone as women caught unawares are more vulnerable. Don't surrender to unreasonable demands even if they come from lawmakers or law-enforcers. As much as possible, avoid giving a perception that you are alone and unprotected. While you should be cautious, don't live in fear. In case of an assault, fight, struggle and scream for help but not at the cost of your life.

What makes them so afraid? According to available data, only 10 per cent of the rapes get reported. Yet even that figure is so high: according to the ncrb data for 2003, there were 15,847 rapes, of which two-thirds were of women between the ages of 18 and 30. More worryingly, 81 per cent of the cases taken up by courts in 2003 are still pending justice and activists estimate the annual conviction rate is as low as 5 per cent. Clearly, despite a growing trend of migration to cities for education and work (according to nss data for 1999-2000, urban to urban migration is 10.14 per cent of the total migration by women), society at large is still not accustomed to women on their own-or with men who are not their fathers, husbands or sons.

When the call-centre worker was raped in Delhi, the key question was not why the police did not respond after her friend called within five minutes for help or what the pcr van parked nearby was doing. It was: what was she doing walking in an unsafe area at 2 in the night? When the Mumbai college student was raped, the question reflected a similar mindset. Why was she making out with her boyfriend in public? And when the cell phone company employee was almost raped by four men in Jaipur, it was the same statement again. She got what she was asking for by drinking and then eating alone at a restaurant in such a "conservative" city.

Single. Unsafe. Easy? These terms are often used indiscriminately in the backlash against the ongoing shift in gender power. It is an atavistic insecurity that manifests itself in attitudes: in a 2002 study of 8,000 respondents across 48 towns and 105 villages in Punjab, the Institute of Development and Communication, a Chandigarh-based think tank found 26 per cent felt that single women were soft targets. More dangerously, it shows up in sexual assaults on women. A survey of 153 women between the ages of 15 and 30 in Delhi and Lucknow by the ngo Saheli in 2002 had the alarming truth: all the women interviewed said they had been at the receiving end of some form of sexual abuse, be it stalking, physical assault or obscene phone calls. Looking over the shoulder has become second nature for women on their own: so much so that they take comfort in crowds.

Rape, always the dark side of the moon, has acquired a far more vicious dimension now, when it is used to punish urban women, as the gap between the aspiration of the have-nots and the reality of the haves widens. Why should girls seemingly have any fun is the subtext of a society that takes vicarious pleasure in consuming the sexcapades of Sarah Jessica Parker and friends on free cable TV or the naughty flirtations of the newest pneumatic music video baby doll. When confronted with it in flesh, their first instinct appears to be to acquire, and when that fails, they do so by force. It is a pattern repeated
especially when faced with the outsider-it could be the North-eastern woman raped in Delhi, the foreign tourist raped in Jodhpur or even the Swiss diplomat raped in Delhi in 2003.

PENDING CASES JUSTICE DENIED

CHANDRAPUR, MAHARASHTRA, 1974: Mathura, a tribal girl, raped by two policemen. After flip flops in court, Supreme Court acquitted the men saying Mathura raised no alarm. JAIPUR, 1992: Bhanwari Devi, a saathin, gang-raped in Bhateri village. The accused were acquitted in 1995. The appeal is pending since 1996. JAIPUR, 1997: A young woman was gang-raped after she visited a university hostel. Case is still on trial. DELHI, 2003: A 35-year old Swiss diplomat was abducted and raped. Over 1,000 people have been interrogated but the accused is still at large. DELHI, 2004: A 19-year-old Fijian of Indian origin was raped by a businessman. The court is yet to pronounce its verdict.

With the breakdown of traditional bulwarks and women competing with men on equal terms especially in service sector industries where night shifts are de rigeuer and interaction with customers/clients even at so-called odd hours expected, the estrangement of the sexes looks likely to grow. Globalisation is gender neutral. It is only interested in the end product, not who made it or how. There is not enough data but there are some straws in the wind: working women now form 15 per cent of the total urban female population of 150 million; the home loan market for single women jumped from Rs 9 crore in 2001 to Rs 24 crore in 2004; and they are also the second-largest group of home-buyers, though their size is still small compared with the number of mortgage loans availed by men. This is accompanied by some mobility-a Centre for Women's Development Studies survey in 2003 found that 38 per cent of the female call-centre employees were from out of town. With the total figure of educated unemployed women in India being 4.1 crore, this mobility will only rise.

But this liberation is not something society seems ready to accept. As women transcend boundaries given to them by generations before them, they lose the protective umbrella of the family: they become anonymous. Fair game. Or in the words of an angry young woman from Bangalore, fed up of far too many men who sit too close to her at bars, they think you're an "easy lay". Moreover, as more women live away from the places of their birth, they find society is not equipped to meet the challenges of housing them or providing transport for them. Working women's hostels are limited and public transport in most cities is not conducive to those who work late hours. Accommodation is always a problem. Take the case of Sreebala K. Menon, a 27-year-old from Chennai who moved to Thiruvananthapuram to work as an assistant director. She took her residents' association to the state women's commission for gender discrimination when they asked her to leave because of late hours and visits by male friends.

Menon fought back but across urban India, many women pursuing their dreams, and sometimes just their needs, simply purse their lips and plough on. Law is the last recourse, for the sloth in the police and judicial system is too deep-rooted. The india today-Ac Nielsen-org-marg poll shows nearly 70 per cent are sceptical of the police handling of cases. In the Saheli survey, 95 per cent of the women said that they would not inform the police about the incident. A cursory look at some long-pending cases will only prove the point (see box). Add to it the general attitude of the police, of paternal moralising rather than policing despite gender sensitisation campaigns. In Chennai, for instance, two years ago, the police arrested 10 young men aged between 20 and 32 for "bringing girlfriends without the knowledge of parents". All of them were produced before the magistrate court and remanded to 15 days custody on instructions from the city commissioner. The police even issued a press release saying they were curbing "illegal activities in the park such as bringing girlfriends without knowledge of parents, sitting in dark shadowy places, committing indecent activities and annoying the public".

But when it comes to conviction rates, there is no such fervour. As activist Flavia Agnes puts it: "Society at large believes it can get away with rape. There is no accountability on the investigative machinery and the prosecution. Often firs are written in a haphazard manner, witness statements are not recorded, on-the-spot panchnamas are done carelessly. Also, doctors in public hospitals whose evidence is crucial do not record the injuries properly.''

Legal reform is as important. There is a demand from women's organisations and the rather toothless National Commission for Women that the rape law be amended to bring non-penetrative and non-vaginal assault into the category of sexual assault; to make every police officer and doctor who has conducted investigations in a haphazard manner accountable with stringent stipulations; and to change the Indian Penal Code language from rape to "sexual assault". But sometimes even legal reform does not help: despite an amendment to the Indian Evidence Act, a woman's sexual history is still used as a defence through the backdoor.

MAMC RAPE CASE

Power of Will A rape victim overcomes the tragedy and an intense trial to nail her tormentor, and get on with her life again For the Maulana Azad Medical College (MAMC) student in Delhi who was raped by three strangers one afternoon in November 2002, just a week before her final exams, it could have been the end of the road. Instead it turned out to be an inspirational new direction-of how a woman can overcome what society considers a stigma with the support of her friends and family, surviving a lax system as well as an often humiliating rape trial.   PICTURE SPEAK CATCHING UP: The victim's resolve helped catch the rapist Rahul within a week Though the girl, now 23 and considered one of the city's rising young doctors, did not want a police investigation, it took some persuasion by the then ACP Vibha Sharma to register an FIR. "I told her family that the police would not harass her and that I would talk to her personally. She would not have to visit a police station repeatedly or even go to court. But first she had to give details of the attack to help the police to nail the rapists," recalls Sharma. Finally the girl agreed. The reconstruction was painful. But the police officer was struck by the girl's resolve. Says Sharma: "She gave us every minute detail of her assailant. That showed he had not broken her will down." There were other factors tearing the victim apart. "Society displays a crude disbelief in such matters," says Sharma. "There was talk that she knew the guy, that she had taken drugs with him. But she gathered her courage and filed the complaint." Students of MAMC and all medical colleges in the city joined hands to protest and put pressure on the police. Working on clues provided by the victim, the police shortlisted and showed a dossier to the girl, who identified her tormentor. Within seven days of the rape, the prime accused, Rahul, was arrested. Then came the hardest part after chargesheets were filed on January 18, 2003. The victim had to face the court, the criminal and the defence lawyers. "Sincere police officers ensured her identity was never revealed to the media," says Varidhi, a close friend. Although shaken in the beginning, she developed nerves of steel by the time she had to identify the accused. She looked straight into the eyes of Rahul and singled him out. She also withstood three hours of grilling while deposing before the court. She answered every question, never once wavering, showing that the body can be assaulted, not the mind. What's more, even today, fewer than 10 people know who she is. by Indrani Ghosh Nangia

Equally vital is a change in the rape debate. Says Ranjana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research: "Has there been any attempt at image building of women as single, smart and successful? Even our textbooks highlight their traditional role in the kitchen. What will the future generation of men learn?" The redefinition of rape as "bad" sexual contact free of the notions of honour of the family and purity/pollution will not be a moment too soon for women. Most women even in seemingly liberal cities are exceedingly careful about their behaviour in public. According to a survey by Mumbai ngo Pukar, they prefer to stick to crowded, even messy public zones. There is such a thing as being "too much of a single woman", or the "new man", says Preethi Singh, 28, a Bangalore-based advertising executive. "If you go out alone every time, men will watch you and follow you. I get weird sms messages that are sometimes difficult to ignore." Being on guard is a state of being with most single women. Politicians with their grandiose plans of imposing economic modernity from above without accounting for social rigidity have not accounted for it: a classic case is of the Rajasthan government's dream of night bazaars and all-night monument viewing even though it cannot provide even university canteens for young people of both sexes to hang out freely. But then security of women is not an issue unless an election is round the corner-there is always the grimmer reality of rural areas where over 90 per cent of the rapes occur.

Is this what the women's movement hoped to achieve after such a long struggle? That its daughters, taught to value their bodies, their minds and their independence, would have to cope with a society that cannot accept them for what they are? That they can work, provide children, be dutiful daughters, but they dare not be themselves? As Rashmee Mathur, a 27-year-old graphic designer who lives alone in Delhi, puts it: "It is like eradicating poverty. Will it ever happen?" It does not seem a logical end to such a long and tortuous journey.

with Indrani Ghosh Nangia and bureau reports

GUEST COLUMN: FLAVIA AGNES

The Mocking Trial When a rape victim goes to court, she is still made to feel she is the accused at every step Does the legal system encourage rape? I wouldn't like to go so far as to say that. But anyone who has seen the way a rape trial is conducted will not have the greatest faith in our system. The level at which cross examination is conducted in court (whether in open or closed door trials) is a mockery. Not only is the past sexual history brought into the cross examination through the backdoor, but also vulgar and demeaning questions are asked. For instance: "When four men raped you, how did you feel? Did you enjoy it? If you did not, then why did you lie still till the fourth one raped you? Did each one of them penetrate you, did you feel the orgasm of each of them? If you fought, why did you not bleed? Is it correct that you are habituated to sexual intercourse?" While judges can stop such humiliating questions, many times they don't. Neither does the public prosecutor who often doesn't raise any objection. There is also the question of gender bias within the judiciary itself. So even when the police and prosecutor have done their jobs well, there may not be a conviction. Even when there is a conviction in the lower court, there may be an acquittal in a higher court as is often the case. Within the higher judiciary there is a bias and one finds rather absurd comments in judgements reported in law books. For instance, in the Bhanwari Devi rape case the trial judge commented: "How can persons of 40 and 60 years of age commit rape in the presence of a 70-year-old Brahmin? Has Indian culture fallen to such low depths? How can upper caste men touch a lower caste woman and rape her?" Even prior to this humiliation, in the medical investigations as well, doctors weigh in with moral judgements with statements such as: "The girl is of loose character, she is habituated to sexual intercourse." This casts a shadow of doubt on the girl right at the initial stage. It is almost as if the verdict is out that she is guilty and so the accused is innocent. In medical colleges students are fed on the premise that rape victims always tell lies. The medical textbooks warn a doctor that a rape victim is not to be trusted. There is a need to change this attitude which can only be brought about by changing the textbooks and training medical students in conducting the medical examinations in a public hospital in a sensitive manner. Add to that a lax attitude to protecting the victim's identity and you have a case where even the strongest victim would balk at seeing the trial through. But I don't buy the capital punishment argument. The women's movement started off with demanding more punishment. So in 1983, there was an amendment to Section 376 of the IPC which made it mandatory to give seven years for all rapes and 10 years for rapes in an aggravated situations-such as gang rapes, rapes of minors and custodial rapes. But this did not prove to be a deterrent. Sadly, the conviction rate has only declined. The writer is a Mumbai-based women's rights lawyer and activist.

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