The greatest happiness on this planet for a parent is when their child takes their first step on Earth—when he or she is born. With the birth of a child comes a lot of responsibilities for both the mother and the father. As the child grows up, enters puberty, and becomes an adult, we slowly introduce them to the harsh reality of the world: "Nobody is actually safe here."
The crimes that take place and hit our social media feeds or news channels scare parents, forcing them to make their children understand certain things. When I was a kid of five or seven years old, I still remember there used to be a session conducted once a year to let us know about good and bad touches. They taught us how we should react, how to stop them, whose touches are the safest, and whose are not. I guess even if those sessions had not been conducted, we all still knew that good touches always come from our father and mother because they are the ones we can fully trust, believe in, and never be scared of telling anything to. Right?
But the worst part was that we only believed it when we were kids in school. Today, when we live in society and understand how people think, the crimes and the types of people we are surrounded by show that perpetrators do not care. They just commit these acts, and this is the main reason why we do not trust people anymore.
The word "Trust" is just a five-letter word, but it carries more weight than any other. Once a person trusts another, they keep on trusting them again and again. But once it is broken, the person is shattered into thousands of pieces, and they can never trust anyone else again. This thought applies to every single human being living today, from a five-year-old kid to an adult and the elderly.
Recently, a case was reported in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar where a five-year-old boy was allegedly assaulted repeatedly by his own 32-year-old father. I mean, seriously, a father? Reports found that the father used to threaten his son, saying he would throw him down from the terrace. Because the son was just a kid, he believed it, and the father took advantage of that fear to sexually assault him. The incident came to light during a small party at the kid's house to celebrate his birthday. When the kid was not enjoying himself and was unhappy compared to everyone else—sitting in a corner, scared and depressed—his mother noticed. She tried to get him to open up, and after a while, he revealed everything he had been going through for several days.
Today, the father is arrested under the POCSO Act, which protects all children, whether a boy or a girl. It feels terrible to listen to this type of news happening around us daily. We, as a society, kept focusing on saving girls and making them understand reality, but we forgot that this is "Kalyug," where neither a boy nor a girl is safe. Both need protection.
But the case takes a turn here: protection from whom, exactly? We used to think that if we were trapped in a bad situation, the first people we would call would obviously be our mom or dad. But whom do you run to, and where do you run, when the person living in your own house is the real culprit—a father?
God created fathers and kids in such a way that children view their father as a superhero, and the kid is a fan of that superhero. But if the superhero turns into their biggest fear, what exactly should they do?
This incident is a wake-up call for our society to make our children strong enough emotionally and mentally so that they know what to do and are not driven by fear. The sessions happening in schools about touching do not make any sense if people like this roam around so freely. Today, the father is arrested, but after some years, he will be let out to roam around freely again. Reporting the situation to the police and arresting the culprit is the easy part of the punishment we give. Think about the boy to whom this all happened. It boils the blood inside many of us. Is this punishment truly fitting for a father or any such culprit?
The police and relevant offices need to understand that this is a wake-up call to change the laws, turn the tables, and become strict. If this is not done, incidents like these will keep happening.
We belong to a society where a gang can rape a girl in a bus and throw her away like garbage, or where a father thinks it is okay to take advantage of his relationship with his own kid and abuse him sexually because they believe they will not be punished. This loophole gives them the power to repeat these crimes, and the government, along with its rules and regulations, is responsible for this. The mother of Nirbhaya had to fight alone for eight years to get her daughter the justice she deserved, all because our system initially punished them by just putting them in jail for a few years. That was wrong.
How is it fair that the person who is assaulted, whether a girl or a boy, dies inside, while the real culprits go on living their lives? If we live in a democracy, the laws must apply equally.
If the victim's life is destroyed, so should the culprit's be. Only then will the people who are thinking of committing a crime like this right now give it a second thought.
References:
- The Khatak
- NDTV Marathi
- ABP News