No end to the horror

A series of bestial events reported recently is most distressing. A man raped his mother until she died in Odisha and a stepfather impregnated his 10-year-old daughter in Rohtak, Haryana. Beating all this in sheer horror was the Sonipat rape, where the victim met a fate even worse than Nirbhaya, which awoke the nation’s conscience just five years ago. The Sonipat event was so barbaric that it revived memories of the horror in New Delhi in 2012, after which so much moved in terms of judicial reform that the death penalty was finally awarded to Nirbhaya’s killers. But nothing seems to have changed in men’s psyche: they seem unable to accept that women have equal rights.

A part of the problem — why the message on the strict new laws against rape doesn’t seem to have permeated the whole of society — is that no one has yet been hanged for rape. Death sentences were passed on the surviving December 2012 rapists, but the process of appeals will continue and it may be years before anyone committing rape goes to the gallows. It is a moot point whether even the harshest sentence on these beasts will have a salutary effect to change the mindset of men who have been accustomed to having their way, as is evident from the number of men known to victims who commit the crime, as in the case of the vicious Sonipat gangrape and murder. Our resolve to spread the message that rapists will be hanged should only grow stronger with each such incident of subhuman behaviour.