Even as the outrage over the brutal gang-rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl from Kathua refuses to die down, there has been no sign of any decline in India’s rape crisis.
On Sunday, Gujarat Police confirmed the rape of a nine-year-old girl whose body found dead earlier this month with 86 injury marks in Surat’s Bhesan locality.
In a chilling reminder of the atrocities meted out on the Kathua victim, the postmortem report of the girl revealed that she was kept confined for eight to ten days, tortured and sexually assaulted.
Another eight-year-old girl was raped and strangled to death at a marriage function in UP’s Etah. According to police, the incident took place at around 1.30 when Sonu Jatav, who was given the task of putting up tents for the marriage ceremony lured the girl, raped her and subsequently killed her.
Protesters at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar | Source: Premankur Biswas/InUth
In another incident in UP, a 24-year-old woman, who works at a private firm in Greater Noida, was allegedly raped by two youth on the Yamuna Expressway while she was on her way home on Saturday evening.
On Monday, another horrific incident came to light in Bihar where a 14-year-old girl was allegedly abducted, gang-raped, tortured and strangled to death over a land dispute by a rival family in state’s East Champaran district.
More than 40,000 cases of rape are reported every year in India. Like the Unnao and Kathua cases, some rape cases have also got widespread media attention in the past. In 2013, the huge public outcry over the horrific gang-rape of a 23-year-old paramedical student in New Delhi led to the enactment of tougher anti-rape laws. Rapists in India are liable to life imprisonment and even the death sentence in the rarest of rare cases.
