THE incidents of the violations of girls on two separate occasions in the city within the last seven days simply stunned the conscience of the civic society. News reports said, two girls, aged 13 and 14, were gang-raped overnight by a bus driver and his associates in Kamalapur on Friday. In another incident on last Tuesday, a college girl in the city’s Mirpur area was deflowered by some miscreants claiming themselves as journalists. These two events are enough to confirm the country’s poor law and order situation in which women are becoming the worst victims. It is really painful that mostly school and college going girls and tender women are falling victim to such brutality. Besides, outside the capital, heinous cases of rape have mostly become too common in the recent years across the country. In some cases, the criminals eventually killed the victims to ward off or cover up the incidents. These human brutes also take obscene snapshots and video scenes of the victims as like in the Mirpur incident. The culprits raped the college girl, and made a video footage and then demanded money and threatened to air the photos and video on the internet. Though belatedly, the police has taken up the cases and arrested some 9 persons alleged to be the perpetrators.Co-incidentally, cases of deflowering women in Bangladesh are somehow encouraged by the presence of such occurrences in India. For example, the Delhi rape case (Dec 2012) of a medical student was followed by a near similar case in Manikgonj where a garment worker was violated in a bus and the recent UP cases (June 2014) are proceeded by the cases under report in the city. Sociologists are, indeed, worried over the chain effects of such social crimes.According to Ain O Salish Kendra, the reported rape cases between January and March’ 2014 is undoubtedly staggering. During this period, 108 cases of rape/attempted rape have been reported. Besides, two women were gang-raped while crossing over to Gaighata in West Bengal’s North 24-Parganas in India in January. In fact, the overall incidents of violence against women and children have increased manifold during the incumbent regime, which has surpassed all previous records.We need to realise that the violence against women and girls is one of the most widespread violations of human rights. Therefore, the violence from which the women suffer must be understood as a devastating crisis and dealt with accordingly. Oppression against women is a constraint to sustainable human development and we must eliminate gender-based inequality and any type of discrimination to narrow the social disintegration.On top of it all, the near lawless situation in the country, coupled with the inaction of the corruption ridden law enforcers, is encouraging the spread of criminal activity. The police is so heavily engaged in carrying out the ruling party agenda that they hardly think it their duty to guard the life or safety of the common ordinary citizens. And the tragedy is that the Home Affairs Ministry is headed by the Prime Minister herself.
