India Tailor Arrest Highlights Alarming Rape Problem

By Shakir Husain NEW DELHI, Jan 26 (Bernama) -- Police in Delhi recently arrested a man who is said to have sexually assaulted scores of children. Some reports say he may have targeted hundreds of minors. The case once again highlights the problem of rape in India where prosecution in cases of sexual crimes remains worryingly low. Ghastly incidents of rape keep surfacing in the media regularly, but there are also a large number of cases that either go unreported or do not attract public outrage. Girls from poor families, street kids and children living in shelter homes are particularly vulnerable to abuse. The alleged rapist arrested by Delhi police is a 38-year-old tailor identified as Sunil Rastogi from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. His modus operandi, according to the reports, was to lure minor girls outside schools and in poor communities and assault them on rooftops, abandoned buildings and under-construction homes. The case attracted wide media coverage, but not enough online outrage or street protests to qualify it as a "national issue." So it will probably become another routine police investigation and gets lost in the prosecution system where countless files of crimes are either gathering dust or moving at a snail's pace. One rape case that provoked unprecedented national outrage and drew international attention in recent memory happened in Delhi in December 2012. In this case, a group of men brutally assaulted a 23-year-old student in a moving bus. The woman later succumbed to injuries in the attack. The savagery so enraged people that the Indian capital witnessed prolonged protests over poor security in the city. National crime statistics show Delhi is among the most unsafe places for women, with 2,199 rapes recorded in 2015. Uncomfortable questions are often asked about violence against women, inefficiency in the prosecution and justice system, gender discrimination, and the problems of policing one of the world's mega cities. Some even blame the violence and male chauvinism shown in Bollywood movies for contributing to crimes against women. A British documentary on the 2012 gang-rape and murder titled "India's Daughter" has chilling conversations that provide an insight into the minds of the perpetrators of sexual assaults. In the arrested tailor's case, shocking details have emerged. Rastogi, a father of five, went to prison a few times earlier, according to his wife's account. Delhi police's version also makes it clear that Rastogi was a known offender. Yet he managed to assault minors for 14 years until his recent arrest. Superstitious by nature, he used to wear his "lucky" red jacket on his train travels to Delhi, where he worked years ago. India's complex socio-economic situation can present its own challenges in profiling potential rapists or paedophiles. Rajat Mitra, a criminal psychologist, wrote in a newspaper column that in his business he came across a "large number" of paedophiles who were priests and administrators of orphanages. Academic discourses aside, what's most urgent in tackling sexual assaults in India is that law enforcement must be robust. The Hindustan Times in an editorial noted that in 2015 there were 94,000 crimes committed against children, many involving paedophiles. --BERNAMA