The Hathras gangrape has reminded us yet again of the cruelty that lies latent within us. It tells us how a woman’s body is used as a battl...
The Hathras gangrape has reminded us yet again of the cruelty that lies latent within us. It tells us how a woman’s body is used as a battlefield, used to punish her, her family and her community, or used for revenge.
Cruelty, like grief, can never be quantified, but each case of rape, indeed of any violence towards a woman, seems to bring out cruelty in a different form. As if the perpetrators are inventively seeking new methods of brutality. The nineteen-year-old girl, in this case, was almost strangulated by her own dupatta, and her spine broken so that she was paralysed. Her suffering ended with her death, but the torment of her family continued, reaching an apogee when the police, refusing to hand over her body to the family, cremated her themselves in the middle of the night. Rather, they burnt her body as if it was a pile of trash, something to be got rid of.
A picture of the burning pyre, surrounded by a cordon of outward-looking blank-faced policemen juxtaposed against the anguished cries and faces of the family watching from a distance was like a scene from Dante’s Inferno.
As if this was not enough, little capsules of information...
