21st April
When 19-year-old Chechen Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested for the Boston Marathon bombings, America got a national hero—the Boston Police. Twenty-six hours after the FBI posted his pictures all over America, Boston Police Department tweeted: “CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody.” The manhunt had resulted in severe inconvenience to people—the entire Boston metropolitan area was shut down all day, and Boston cops conducted house-to-house searches. The scene of Tsarnev’s arrest soon became an arena of celebration. Citizens of the town packed the streets clapping their hands and congratulating the 30-odd helmeted policemen who had participated in the operation, shouting, “Thank you! Thank you!” On Thursday, at a memorial service in Boston for the victims of the attack that included 8-year-old Martin Richard, President Obama had vowed to hunt down the two perpetrators. “Yes, we will find you, and yes, you will face justice,” he had said. And they did.
On the evening of the same day the bombings happened a continent away, a young girl—three yours younger than Martin—had disappeared while playing in front of her house in a Delhi slum. Two days later, neighbours rescued the child from her sordid prison in the ground floor of her own house after a passerby heard her faint pleas of help. The Delhi Police had registered her missing but no beat constable presumably heard the cries for help, even though the area was supposed to be regularly patrolled. She had been kept there for three days, raped and savaged with candles and broken bottles. The sadist happened to be a migrant from Bihar who was arrested the same day as Tsarnev. But Delhi’s streets erupted in anger, not in congratulation. Meanwhile, the Congress government had by now learnt lessons in public relations after its disastrous handling of the gangrape and subsequent murder of a young paramedic in Delhi on a cold December night last year. The Prime Minister hastened to express his regret and politicians rushed to the hospital where the child was being treated.
According to statistics, 24,206 rape cases were reported in India, much lower than in America. A study called the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey begun in 2010 found that one-third of American women have been victims of rape, beating or stalking, or a combination of assaults. 1.3 million American women are victims of rape or attempted rape annually. Only 84,767 rapes were reported in 2010, according to FBI figures.
Yet there is a vast cultural divide that separates India and America on violence against women—the role of law enforcement. After the parents of the five-year-old girl went to the police station to register an FIR, the cops offered them `2,000 to keep quiet and thank god that the girl was alive. A day later, a police officer slapped a woman protester at the hospital where the child was being treated. In the Delhi gangrape protests, the police used lathis and water cannons against students assembled at India Gate. What makes the two countries so different when it comes to policing? In a corrupt police system like India’s, ironically it was the same coloniser India and America had shared which founded our police department—Britain. When it became difficult in many districts to collect taxes for the empire because of lawlessness, the British instituted the kotwal system. Only, the empire didn’t pay them, they had to collect their salaries from the people. The best way would be to extort money from all except the powerful landlords—a post-colonial tradition of insensitivity and bribery that continues even today.
“The people of Boston can sleep tonight,” said the city’s mayor after Tsarnev was arrested. Can India’s women and little girls? Call 100 to find out.
ravi@newindianexpress.com
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