Guwahati rape: justice will not come

The Guwahati rape is a televised celebration actually. But am penning down things that strike me at random.

A 40 strong mob performs to camera, the molestation – call it public rape of a girl that it thinks `deserves it’. The police comes a neat half an hour or 45 minutes later, and `rescues the girl’ from the men who are still pawing at her the way animals paw at their prey. They pull her hair and urge her to show her face to the camera. How dare she enter a bar – their territory, get drunk and pick up a fight with men? After all, only they, the male of the species `have that self-proclaimed right’!

First – what was the guy filming the whole thing doing? What exactly was on his mind when he allowed the men do it? Was he not egging the mob to do it further when he turned spotlight on them? The news channel may cry hoarse from the roof-tops that it was trying to do justice to the girl. In what way? By giving the footage to other news channels after airing it? 

As a citizen I am interested to know if there was exchange of money between channels over the footage – after all, the visuals were `exclusive’. Statements by the Women’s Commission members say there were cigarette stubs on her body. They say the girl reported begging for help from the guy filming it constantly, but he continued to, well, film her. What exactly was he thinking while cigarette stubs made way to her body? About the kind of money these visuals would make? About how he would be able to walk into peers and get a pat for a `great’ story?

Actually, doesn’t porn industry work that way too? Filming sexual acts? The difference – in porn films, the people perform for camera. They get paid. Here it was a case of the cameraman filming rape when the girl cried for help. Superb sense of morality this.

He claimed to call the police who took their own sweet time to arrive. The police chief said later that police were not ATM machines where you press the button and help comes out. Wow! Thank you chief, for letting us womankind know that we, deserve such incidents because we have begun to `dare’ to go to bars, get into fights the way men do, while you bask in your falsified glory of medals and power. Responsibility? Protection? Forget it. It’s left to us mortals. In as many words you just said that if we as women dare to go out and party the way men do, we better be prepared for rape. Protection to people? Damned. Protecting women? What's that?

This brings me to my second point. The police `rescued the girl’. But did not arrest the animals immediately. While people say there was a 40 strong crowd involved, later statements by the cops say they are convinced ``at least 12 persons’’ were involved. And then the ATM machine remark. I bet cops are gossipping behind the scenes about the girl's morality and how she ` should not have' invited trouble. Would they react this way if their own women were subjected to such torture?

I just checked the Facebook profile of Amar Jyoti Kalita, who has now become not `infamous’ but `famous’ thanks to his very `noble’ deed. If you want to know how this animal views women in general, his FB post of March 29, 2012 is titled `Why dogs are better than girlfriends’. To begin with, the post says: `Dogs don’t care how many other dogs you had before them’.

The post goes on to say: that you don’t have to get the dog’s brother a job! So for the creature named Amar Jyoti Kalita, dogs are better than women! Interestingly, only his pictures get circulated in facebook. What about the other animals around? Are we stuck up with wanting to find a face for an incident?

Those beasts were harming a woman for camera. Smiling at it, displaying the prey by hair, groping the prey, hitting the prey and loving every bit of the attention.

Still, I guarantee what will happen further – the arrests may or may not happen while backroom deals go on about how to use loopholes in the rule book to get the accused animals out of trouble soon.

If a case gets registered, be assured the case will drag on for years. And during those `years’, every hearing will be an ordeal for the girl – from travelling to the court, to putting up with the taunts of people around in the court – be it the friends of accused, family, or simply passersby who feel it their right to moralise about the girl’s behaviour.

Indian cities are not new to molestation cases, are they? Remember the new year molestation of girls at Juhu in Mumbai! Do we know anything of them today? Girls were abused outside a pub at Mangalore by thugs – what does the media know about them today? Campaigns like Pink Chaddi aside, all we heard about the thugs who belonged to a political party – is that their party chief was not so interested in ideology as making money from it. This was published by a weekly magazine that conducted a sting.

Again, be assured. Justice is a distant star in this case.