The number of rape cases in Assam has suddenly gone up. The accused often go unscathed even if they spend a few years in jail. Rape is a pre-meditated crime and after the infamous Nirbhaya case in 2012 many stringent legal provisions have come up but the number of cases is simply spiralling.

It shows, therefore, that punishment per se is not a deterrent. If laws were able to control crime then India would have been safer for women after 2012. But it has not. Not even foreign women tourists are spared. This brazenness shocks us but it is happening.

As a woman one begins to wonder, where do we go from here? And while Assam has been in the news in recent times simply for the sheer number of rape cases, women in all seven states of the North-east experience this depravity on a daily basis.

In Meghalaya, a former legislator is still serving jail term, for allegedly raping a minor girl repeatedly at different locations. He was supplied the girls by people who allegedly hired her as a housemaid. The helpless girl at last managed to escape and reported the matter to the police. Thankfully, the legislator lost the election this time despite garnering a substantial number of votes.

In the recent assembly session in Assam, rape and other forms of violence against women became a heated topic of discussion. At least 3,009 rape cases and 17,106 cases of violence against women were registered since the BJP government led by Sarbananda Sonowal took charge in 2016. In 2016-17, altogether 1,552 cases were registered in Assam and between January 2017 and the time of writing, there have been 1,457 such cases.

These figures were given by parliamentary affairs minister, Chandra Mohan Patowary, who also stated that at least nine women were killed after being raped during this time.

Of the 3,009 rape cases reported, only 1,786 persons have been arrested and 1,697 have been charge-sheeted. But the conviction rate is dismal. Only 76 have been convicted so far. The cases of violence against women, numbering 8,771, were registered in 2016-17 and from January 2017 till date, the figure is 8,335. But by the end of the 2018, this is likely to go up. What is shocking is the number of cases of abduction of women. Altogether 4,794 women were abducted in 2016-17 and 4,314 in 2017-18.

So where is the law and order one might ask. Or is the present system incapable of handling these sensitive cases? Is the police training given thus far equal to the task before it? How is rape cases actually handled?

It would be interesting if research is conducted on police standard operating procedures (after a rape case is reported). How quick is the response time? Or is police inured by these daily crimes against womanhood? How many women policemen make up the police force in any state? How trained are they in understanding the nuances of gender and what triggers crimes against women?

While it is futile to expect the police alone to deal with what is a social crime, the fact remains that the police are the punitive arm of the law and it is they who are the first court of appeal that citizens take recourse to.

The police, by now, know exactly why rape cases go under the radar and why they fail in a court of law. Evidence gathering at the best of times is, weak and insufficient to nail the culprit (rapist) in a justice system where it is believed that not a single person should be punished without every shred of evidence being tested and found sufficient for such conviction. No wonder these days, the people have decided to take the law into their own hands rather than rely on the criminal justice system.

This happened in Arunachal Pradesh where a girl child was raped. It is happening in Assam where minors are raped. And this vigilantism is bound to take a copy-cat mode if the law fails to deter future rapists from committing offences against women.

Social media is replete with statements that rapists should be castrated because that is the only justice that can be delivered for such a heinous crime. While human rights activists might not agree with such vigilantism, the fact remains that desperate times call for desperate measures and if one is to scan the reports from Assam then the situation does warrant desperate measures.

But as a society we are left to wonder as to what has gone wrong with our social mores. Why has the instinct of the beast overtaken humans to the point that a rapist fails to see the face of his mother/sister/ daughter in the rape victim? Is it rage that drives men to rape? Is it a repressed sexuality, which parents have not been able to sufficiently explain and which is let loose because the avenues for watching pornography are now just a click away and the instrument can be held on one’s hand?

Many parents have complained that their kids, both sons and daughters, retire to their rooms for the night but spend long hours well past midnight fiddling with their gadgets. Parents moan that it’s no longer possible to monitor what their children watch once they are out of the house or in their own bedrooms. This should make us rethink even our tested parenting strategies. What are we, as parents, doing to confront the growing crime of rape and violence against women? How are our sons introduced to sex and sexuality? Is sex education in schools enough to orient the male mind towards understanding the brutality of raping a young girl or a girl child, or a woman for that matter?

There is a certain attempt to profile rapists in Assam as being people of Bangladeshi origin who have nothing to lose because they can commit crimes and cross the borders with impunity. While we are all, as a region, appalled by the constant stream of illegal immigration into our hitherto safe spaces, it is also possible to not see the woods for the trees if we believe that only men of a certain social strata are capable of committing rape and other sexual crimes.

Rapists come in different socio-economic profiles and the “me too” campaign has emboldened women to speak up and narrate their tales of molestation, most often at the hands of male family members (uncles, cousins, et al).

Research informs us that rape is most often committed by a person known to the victim/survivor and/or by family members. But that categorisation is no longer sacrosanct. These days rape is committed by complete strangers on unsuspecting young women and children. This makes it difficult for the law to reach out to every nook and corner of the country.

It is here that society has a role to play. Merely condemning a rape and ranting about it on social media is not going to help. We need citizens’ action groups to start speaking about the crime of rape and to help us understand what part of the male psyche triggers this crime.

We need to seek the help of psychologists and psycho-analysts to enable us to get a grip on how to deal with and counsel our young sons and male members of the family to allow their sexuality a healthy outlet. A peer support group of this nature will help because we may not be able to find words to counsel our own but group members can help our children while we can help theirs.

Can we start somewhere instead of lamenting our fates?

The writer is Editor of the Shillong Times and can be contacted at patricia.mukhim@gmail.com