HERE ARE A few headlines, other than that of the Hyderabad gang-rape case, that greeted us in the first few days of December:
Dec 3, UP Man kills couple; rapes woman’s corpse, 10-year-old daughter
Dec 3, Odisha Woman raped by policeman, aide inside police quarters
Dec 3, Bihar Another rape-murder: Rapists burn upper half of teen’s body
Dec 2, Chhattisgarh 16-year-old girl gang-raped and beaten up by 2 men
Dec 2, Rajasthan 17-year-old girl chained, allegedly raped by father
The search for “rape in India” yielded 38.4 crore results in 0.35 seconds on Google. Adding the word conviction to that—”rape conviction in India”—caused a drastic drop: 58.8 lakh results in 0.42 seconds. While that is not conclusive, it is definitely indicative of the rape epidemic in India.
The conviction rate for murder with rape or gang-rape is 57.9 per cent and for rape it is 32.2 per cent, as per the NCRB. However, these figures only cover cases in which trials have been completed. The pendency rate of cases for murder with rape or gang-rape and rape combined is 87.5 per cent. Moreover, a 2017 study funded by the ministry of women and child development conceded that underreporting is “quite high”.
While India lags behind in dealing with rape, it tops the world in Googling for rape videos (see graphics). In the past 12 months, worldwide interest in rape videos never fell below 74/100. India scored 100, followed by neighbours Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
For gang-rape videos, the global interest mostly stayed around 25. But it exploded after April 28 and hit 100 for seven days—May 5-11. The reason, the search for the “Alwar gang rape video” (a woman was gang-raped in Alwar on April 26; the act was filmed and circulated). Those key words pushed the score to 100 worldwide and in India on the exact same dates.
Interestingly, for the search “porn videos” (minimum score of 76), India stands ninth with a score of 39.
Rape 32,559
Murder with rape/gang-rape 223
Cases reported in 2017, as per the NCRB