As soon as the clock strikes 8:30 in the night, you can notice women everywhere fastening their pace trying to get home from work or finishing up their errands. The fear is evident in the eyes of the women who still need to get home or are stuck all alone, covering themselves up. All because they don’t want to be another one of “India’s Daughters”. 

Since the ruthless rape of Jyoti Pandey, a 23-year-old paramedical understudy in Delhi, a microscopic limelight has been thrust upon India and the rising sexual violence against its women. Since the execution of the convicted and the outroar that followed the Nirbhaya case, one would expect that the crimes against women, mainly sexual violence would decrease. You would unfortunately be proven wrong. There were as many as 47,381 crimes against women in Maharashtra in the year ended March 2023, a jump from 45,331 in 2021-22 and 39,526 in 2020-21, according to economic survey data. 

These are only the ones which are reported. Reports show 99.1 per cent of cases go unreported. Here, the victim never gets the chance to tell her story and get justice. The victim also has the fear of backlash. Sometimes, seemingly innocent questions from friends and family may convince her that she was to blame. The fear that she will be defamed and disgraced or that what she experienced was trivial compared to other cases leads to women at times not even believing what happened to them was sexual violence. And the survivors, who report the cases and desire justice, don’t particularly have it easy. They still have a long and tiring road ahead of them. They face huge obstacles in obtaining justice with pending court dates and at times a callous attitude from the authorities and justice system. The insufficient legal aid and disheartening conviction rates aren’t much help either. These challenges are magnified if the victim is from a marginalized section of the society. Furthermore, when it comes to sexual violence there is another issue that has been at the center of women’s safety discussions for a long time. 

 The definition of rape as specified in section 375 of the Indian Penal Code includes all forms of sexual assault involving non-consensual intercourse with a woman. But what is the real problem here, is the Exception 2 to Section 375. It excuses unwilling sexual intercourse between a husband and wife over fifteen years of age from what is section 375’s definition of “rape” and thus makes acts like such legal in the eyes of the justice system and prevents victims from seeking out help and removing herself from situations such as these. According to the current law, women are automatically handing over their consent once they marry. India is one of 36 countries that don’t recognize marital rape as a criminal offense. 

In a recent judgment, the Supreme Court criminalized unwilling sexual contact with a wife between fifteen and eighteen years of age. In light of this, the calls for the constitutionality of the exception 2 as a whole to be challenged have been louder and louder. Although the Indian Constitution promises equality to all its citizens, by way of this law it favours the husbands who rape their wives in India. Date Rape, Statuary rape, Custodial rape, Gang Rape, and Corrective Rape are all official manners of rape which have been prevalent in India and the core of India’s problem of sexual violence against women.

Coming to the evolution of tackling sexual violence in India’s courts there have been major developments forward. Nirbhaya Fund was announced by the Finance Minister in his 2013 budget speech, with a Government contribution of Rs. 1000 crores for the empowerment, safety and security of women and girl children. The fund is administered by the Department of Economic Affairs of the Finance Minister. Under this fund, Safe City Projects have been sanctioned in phase I in 8 cities. On 19th February 2019, in accordance with the Criminal Law, an online analytic tool for police called ‘Investigation Tracking System for Sexual Offences’ to monitor and track time-bound investigations in sexual assault cases was launched. Along with this, the launching of ‘The National Database of Sexual Offenders’ and several Cyber Crime Forensic Labs across India, the Emergency Response Support are all legal actions that were necessary to take in our country. But this doesn’t mean every decision taken by the justice system is in the favour of sexual violence survivors. Namely, the recent momentum in India where rapists are escaping punishment and evading the law by marrying the survivors who are most of the time underage. Because in our society, many still see a woman who is raped as ‘impure’, it leaves her no choice but to accept the rapist as her husband to prevent her family from further stigma and shame. Often times the virtue and value of a woman is brought up in the court with lawyers using the past sexual history of the women to establish the presence of consent. The character of the victim instead of the accused is brought into question, often by the defence to completely flip the narrative. Even though this is illegal it is still used by many lawyers who act as defence during Rape Cases. This shows that while there may have been some progress when it comes to the protection of women in our courts there has been a lot more regress.

Over centuries past, intense gender norms have been enforced upon men with self-perpetuation loops and multiple rounds of confirmation from society that have formed a social identity which has imposed the view that men have more power over women, economic social and political. 

Nearly all men in India are socialized from a young age to view women as property and having less value than men. All of this lays the foundation for sexual violence and gender discrimination in our society. Traditional male norms have helped the inescapable social construct that we live in. No amount of feminism, laws or protests will ever stop the rising sexual violence in our country but bringing about a deconstruction of this mindset just might.

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