Who to be held responsible?
While sitting with my friends in a local tea shop (DHABA), there was a breaking news report on TV, showing a student of grade 12 who was allegedly gang-raped in Balakot Road, Mansehra.
The TV channel claimed that the girl was taking lift from the alleged culprits. This shocking news got the attention of almost everyone sitting in the coffee shop. Which lead us to a debate on why such rape cases are now more frequent, as compared to the past.
The conclusion was unanimous: everyone claimed that these cases are because of two main reasons.
First obviously, girls themselves are responsible for this – because of the way they dress and the way they have started acting which provokes men, simply put.
And second reason is lack of Islamic practices in our society. Few individuals even claimed that Pakistani constitution is also not Islamic. This was mixed with a few other conspiracy theories which are not worth mentioning here.
For a while reasons given were quite reasonable, but while dealing factually they are way off from the ground realities.
Taking the same rape case mentioned above, let’s consider that alleged men were friends of victim girl and sitting in their car is girl’s fault. How does that justify that these men, or animals rather, had the license to rape girl in moving car?
Let’s then consider if how a girl dresses and the way she conducts herself in public are actually reasons behind such heinous acts. Then I’d like to ask why there are rape cases registered in which rape victim is a girl of age 3 to 5 years. I now doubt girl’s dressing is reason. Maybe someone says that this is her parent’s fault, who left her daughter unattended.
But unfortunately in our society, there are also rape cases reported in which seven boys were victim of such cruelty. No valid justification for such incidents.
And what does one say regarding cases in which victim is not even a living human being.
I am referring to case reported in which freshly buried dead bodies in graveyard were sexually assaulted. The reasons like signs/dressing & Pakistani society/laws are now all seem invalid.
Even we can’t say, these cases are because, our society is far away of Islamic teaching, as in most cases culprits are apparently looking like they belong to religious background.
I believe if there is any specific reason behind such cases, it is only and only our behavior and our sick mindset. Instead of protecting our girls, we should teach our boys how to behave. From early school day we should teach them that girls are as human as they are. We should consider example of our neighboring country
Where one rape case in bus was reported in India, the public stood for justice and introduced dozens of mobile applications which can help girls in danger. A massive campaign to create awareness against the act of rape was also run.
This is high time now that we encourage girls to stand for their rights, there should be specific workshop/training for doctors so they can effectively preserve DNA for evidence purposes and help patient to recover from mental trauma. There are a lot of potholes in our judicial system, there should be a body that can recommend amendments in law to speed up such cases & most important we should change our attitude towards women.