Most of the crimes against women not reaching police

It is heartening to see the Sealdah court sentencing the main accused, Sanjay Roy, in the RG Kar rape and murder case, to imprisonment till death.

- Anukriti Sharma

It is heartening to see the Sealdah court sentencing the main accused, Sanjay Roy, in the RG Kar rape and murder case, to imprisonment till death. The wheels of justice have moved at an incredible pace, but the question is—has justice really been done? Are girls and women any safer today than they were a few months ago?

What about victims of similar cases who don't have a voice, who do not belong to powerful professional communities like doctors or students, or who do not belong to metros such as Delhi or Kolkata? This article is an attempt towards answering some of these questions and also proposes some solutions, which might help us make Indian women feel safe.

The solution to any problem lies in defining the problem first, which might help us in understanding the root cause of it and thereby finding long-lasting and impactful solutions. The current case is not a one-off brutal criminal act, not rarest of the rare as the judgment says, but instead is an outcome of a deeper malaise affecting our society. The doctor victim was called Nirbhaya 2.0 due to its similarity with the rape and murder case of a physiotherapy intern in Delhi in 2012, but the National Crime Records Bureau's (NCRB) annual report says that 248 women were raped and murdered in 2022 alone.