On 14th September, a 19 year old girl’s body was found by her mother naked and bleeding in a small village named Hathras in Uttar Pradesh. She had allegedly been raped and after two weeks of fighting for her life in the hospital, she died yesterday morning (29th September) .
A 19-year-old woman who was gang-raped and assaulted in Hathras of Uttar Pradesh, passes away at a hospital in Delhi, confirms her brother.
— ANI (@ANI) September 29, 2020
The woman was gang raped in Hathras on 14th September, 2020.
The incident has steered the conversation around the conviction rates and the punishment given to the perpetrators. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 1,56,327 rape cases were on trial in 2018. Of these, trial for just 17,313 cases was completed, resulting in conviction of just 4,708 cases.
A total of 28,750 rape cases were sent for trial during 2017, but only 3.5 per cent — 1,010 cases — resulted in conviction. The report also revealed that the conviction rate was even lower in metropolitan cities at 27.2%.
Out of the 1,27,868 rape cases pending trial in 2017 in the country, every third case was older than three years. 12,216 rape case trials were pending for more than five years, and 1,840 rape case trials were pending for more than 10 years.
The report stated that the chargesheeting rate in rape cases has come down from 95.4% in 2013 to 86.6% in 2017. While the conviction rate in murder cases is at over 43%, it was 32.2% in the rape cases.
Nine out of ten accused of sexual offences are let off in states like West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat, Odisha and Karnataka. Vani Subramanian, from women empowerment group Saheli said:
The low conviction rate shows that perpetrators of sexual violence enjoy a high degree of impunity, including being freed of charges.
One of the common reasons for criminals not getting their due punishment is blamed on the poor police investigation. However, many reasons such as hostility of witnesses and complainants and the familial pressure on the victim also play a role in the low conviction rate.
According to the annual National Crime Record Bureau, India reported 4,05,861 cases of crimes against women in 2019 and UP ranked number 1 with 59,853 such incidents.
From 2018, the rate of crime against women has risen by 7.3%, with the country recording an average 87 rape cases every day in 2019 and the recent case of Manisha being brutally injured and allegedly assaulted, just proves the atrocities agaisnt women in the state.
