Editorial: At the receiving end
Srinagar: The rape and murder of an eight year old girl child in Kuthua area of Jammu last month has brought a grim reminder before us about the value we as a society attribute to the fairer sex. Though the incident was so shameful in nature that even if the accused is hanged publicly for the crime, still the punishment won’t be enough for us to say that justice has been done.
The character and culture of a people can be evaluated by knowing how much respect we give to the women folk especially young age or school and college going girls. Unfortunately, despite tall claims of enjoying high standards of morality and ethics we have been too harsh towards the womenfolk on almost all fronts.
Crime against women is showing an upward trend as we too have been acting more inhuman while dealing with the women in the state. Be it married, young or even teenage girls, everyone has a harrowing story to narrate.
Even when the state’s assembly was in session, the issue came up for discussion there as well. A reply or the summation of the crime against women provided by the government is very disappointing and a sad commentary on the character of the people involved and the performance of the police.
No doubt whenever a case of crime like molestation, harassment, dowry harassment, rape, outrage and physical violence against married women is brought to the policed, they do their job of filing the FIR and then the follow up action. But at the end of the day the case gets stuck up at the level of either the investigation or legal dispensation.
In most of the cases the culprits run scot free just because the law is so complex, so vague and so ineffective that the judge despite being satisfied that there is a case of crime against women is unable to deliver the judgment to the at purpose and bring the culprit to book.
The disappoint part of the crime against women in our State is that instead of coming down in comparison to the number of cases last year it has come up. In the year 2016, the number of cases of crime against women was 2,915 cases in 2016. But their number during 2017 has risen to 3,168.
What are the reasons that the number has gone up when the police took more steps to prevent the crime? Why did it happen when more women were recruited in the police cadres and they were given respective areas for supervision?
Obviously, there is some shortcoming somewhere in the entire system which needs to be identified and set right. The shortcomings are visible but we do not wish to accept them. We need to change our mindset and the way we look at things.
Change needs to be set in motion right now, tomorrow may be too late.
KV Correspondent
