Last night a mob of some 20 men molested a 17 year old girl publicly in full gaze of bystanders and electronic media. A local media outlet videographed whole incident while the girl was abused, molested, stripped and beaten by the mob.

The girl was coming out of a pub. An eve teaser abused her. She gave a fitting reply, and the man was outraged. So, he became a ‘moral police’ – dragged the girl on to the street, asked other men to join the ‘fun’. In the guise of taking moral lessons, these men beat her, asked her why she was drunk, and repeatedly touched her private parts. All before the camera.

It is clear that some men must have known the victim beforehand and waited for an ‘opportunity’ to molest her – or what some call ‘character assassination’. This incident is actually a character assassination of India itself.

This is not first time a girl is being treated inhumanly in Assam. In November 2007 some men stripped an adivasi woman completely naked publicly (about which I had written then).

Few questions must be asked: who were these men to ask what that girl did or where she went? Do these men treat their mothers, daughters and sisters the same way? Who are these people to even touch a girl hurting her modesty and self respect, even if she was drunk? Where were the police? Why only 3 people have been arrested when there are more men involved and whose faces are clearly identifiable?

Other important questions:

Why women in India treated worst than slaves both inside and outside their homes, mostly by their relatives most of the times? Is it crime for a girl to go out in night and have fun? Isn’t she free to do what she thinks right or what is her right? Why men are so ‘insecure’ about women’s freedom? Why men want to keep women perpetually enslaved?

Here this incident took place with so much impunity thanks to collective crime of men they perpetuate at their homes. In India domestic violence is a routine crime – both in rural and urban areas. But, beating a 17 year old girl, that too when she was pleading for mercy is utterly insensitive and horrendous.

As we progress towards modernity and economic prosperity, crimes against women are going up actually.

This is clearly failure of law enforcement agency’s duty to protect women who go out at night. Instead we have chauvinistic police officers asking girls not to venture out at night, and also there are officers and politicians asking women to cover fully while they go out!

And there are women politicians who call a rape incident as political conspiracy to malign their administration.

This indicates two things: one, men are dangerous by nature so women must wear modest dress (like in Arab countries) to avoid being raped or eve teased. Second, inability of police to reign in criminal elements, especially rapists and eve teasers.

What should be done to do justice to the girl: immediately arrest all the bastards who took part in the crime; ask search engines to block the video which is going viral on the net; ask media to refrain from broadcasting the footage again and again, especially regional ones which tend to run the footage whole day; give the girl medical aid and counselling; and finally speedy trial of the case by the courts to punish the guilty.

If men do not learn to respect women and give them their right place in the society, we will still continue to live in a morally degraded world that will always remain backward howsoever it is advanced technologically and economically.

Aspiring to become ‘superpower’, India must eliminate injustice it perpetuates to its own people, especially women, before it even thinks of becoming one

(From http://win2vin.wordpress.com)