Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
Aug 24, 2013

Like you I am sick and tired of these rape stories and the tawdry almost absurd follow ups. Catch these beasts, castrate them, do what you have to but let’s stop this nonsense. We come off like a bunch of savages, is no girl safe, is every Indian youth stalking some woman?

Read the CNN report by a University of Chicago student RoseChasm and her account of a young student who suffered a mental breakdown after being “stalked, groped, masturbated at” on a trip to India.

Obviously, between the cops, the government and the judiciary, the combined defence is weak, rusted by delay and utterly without result. Unless the consequences are ratcheted up dramatically and administered when the issue burns rather than when it is cold and part of history, these attacks will continue.

The only way is to make rape where the evidence is so compelling a case for the military court martial. Immediate, to the point and done and dusted. The message is not getting out. Those who assault women still believe they can get away with it. And for the most part, they do. Only the high profile cases get picked up by the media, there is a momentary howl, some placard holding marches, a slew of now disgusting promises for action by equally dismal politicians and that’s it.

Everyone has done their bit…onto the next one.

Somebody asked me if I would hold the weapon and shoot a rapist once it is proven he committed that act. In a second, without the slightest remorse and I’d go out and have dinner after that and even see a movie. These are not human beings, these are vermin and how long are we going to skirt the issue and pretend it doesn’t happen.
The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind because we just do not want to see that our system is broken…much like our values.

(The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today and Bahrain Tribune)