Take on sexual terror as we do terrorism

There will be people - men and women, patriots all - who will consider what happened to a 28-year-old Spanish tourist on March 1 in Dumka, Jharkhand, to be a shameful aberration. Both statistical and anecdotal evidence will be trotted out to 'prove' that India is as unsafe or safe for women as any other country. And to tarnish it as being anything else would be to harbour prejudice. This kind of 'normalising' defence won't cut ice. What happened to a foreigner happens to our citizens with far less outbreak of outrage or shame. At the root of the problem is lack of adequate deterrence - cultural, procedural, legal - against sexual violence. We need zero-tolerance, treating rape on a par with every patriot's favourite offence, terrorism.

The Jharkhand High Court stated that the sexual assault against the visiting Spaniard is likely to bring adverse publicity to the country. That is as lopsided a way of thinking as worrying about reputational damage to a family for having a murderer in its midst, rather than being singularly concerned about bringing the murderer to justice. Logic and law dictate that sexual violence be taken out 'at the source' - when any woman, in any part of India, whether Badaun or Bengaluru, Sandeshkhali or Srinagar, comes under sexual attack.

In 2022 alone, police across the country recorded 31,516 rape cases, a 20% increase from 2021, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. And that's the number of cases in police records. Twelve years after the nation took to the streets after the 'Nirbhaya' rape and murder horror in the national capital, we have to ensure that we're shamed into action to punish sexual violence by law - and not shamed that such crimes may show India in a bad light. Which, of course, it does.