Drug addiction, increasing alcoholism, pornography on the internet cause behind increasing victimisation, molestation and rape of women in our country !

 By Ranjan Srivastava

The gruesome rape and murder of a junior doctor in Kolkata has once again shaken the public conscience in the country.

How the Trinamool Congress government of West Bengal ignored the sensitivity of the incident and the way the local administration tried to cover up the incident in the beginning was noted by the Kolkata high court which ordered a CBI inquiry.

The High Court’s decision is therefore justified. This was followed by the court taking a quick and sensible decision on the petition of the victim’s parents, rejecting the argument of the Mamata Banerjee government to wait till Sunday for the outcome of the police inquiry and ordering the CBI to investigate the incident immediately.

Waiting till Sunday for the result of the police investigation meant the possibility of the evidence being further destroyed.

Perhaps, what raised doubts in the mind of the High Court was the immediate appointment of the Principal of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital to another hospital on the same post by the state government after he had resigned owning moral responsibility for the horrible rape and murder on the medical college campus that he headed as the principal.

There was no reason for this haste i.e. posting of the principal to another college within no time if the government was really sensitive towards the investigation.

The fresh posting was shocking as if it was the most important task in the hands of the government instead of ensuring a speedy, free, and fair investigation of the rape and murder case.

The college administration also tried its best to cover up the incident and this became evident by how the authorities treated the victim’s parents from the very beginning.

It seemed that the medical college was more concerned about saving its reputation than getting justice for the victim.

The nature of serious injuries on the victim’s body mentioned in the postmortem report suggests that apart from Sanjoy Roy, a civil volunteer of the Police Welfare Board who frequented RG Kar Medical College and its associated hospital, others may also have been involved in committing this crime.

However, it is the CBI inquiry that can establish if it was a case of gang rape.

It has been more than a decade since the Nirbhaya incident in Delhi. The way the whole country reacted after the incident and the government assured people that it would take appropriate steps to stop such incidents, it appeared to many that such incidents would be effectively stopped, but the situation as seen in the context of women’s safety in the country does not reflect a good sign.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)’s report of the year 2022, on average as many as 90 rape cases take place every day across the country which means about 4 rape cases per hour on average.

Another shocking fact is that the city of Kolkata, where the rape and murder of the junior doctor took place, was declared the “safest metro city” among the metros of the country for the third consecutive year in 2022.

One of the reasons for the increasing incidents of rape is the pornography easily available on the Internet and the filth and violence served through various programs on the OTT (Over-the-top) platform.

Another reason is the trade of alcohol and illegal drugs being sold everywhere. The government has failed to save the children and youth of the country from all these addictions.

The BJP government, concerned with the increasing rape incidents in Madhya Pradesh, got a bill passed about seven years back with a provision for the death penalty in cases of rape of girls below 12 years of age.

Considering drug addiction, alcoholism, and pornography as major factors behind such incidents, the then Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan had talked about launching a campaign against drug addiction and pornography, in his speech in the Legislative Assembly, but even after almost 7 years of the bill, it does not seem that there has been any change in the ground reality.

It is not just a coincidence that many pornographic clips were found in the smartphone of Sanjoy Roy, who was arrested in the case of rape and murder in Kolkata Medical College, and he is also said to be addicted to alcohol.

He had consumed loads of alcohol at the time of the incident as was reported.

Many such incidents have taken place across the country in which the accused were found to be addicted to drugs.

The way internet facilities are expanding up to villages, pornography is also reaching there and the way obscenity and violence are spreading through OTT its overall effect coupled with the bad impact of alcohol and narcotics, on the minds and brains of people, particularly those with criminal bent of mind, can be easily imagined.

There is a need for the government to show a strong willpower to stop such ghastly crimes. But this will happen only when the priority of the government is not just winning the elections but the safety of the women of the country as well.