The West Bengal Assembly unanimously passed a law which goes beyond the settled jurisprudence on sentencing rape convicts as a response to the heinous rape and murder of the doctor in RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata on August 9. Called the Aparajita Woman and Child (West Bengal Criminal Laws and Amendment) Bill 2024, it proposes death penalty for the convict when the assault results in the death of the victim or leaves her in a vegetative state, and death or life imprisonment without parole for rape in other cases. The proposed legislation also mandates that investigation in rape cases be completed in 21 days from the date of the FIR and trials within a month, and that women officers lead the probe. There is also a strong reference to protecting the privacy and dignity of the survivor during the trial.
At first glance, this seems a delayed but appropriate response from the Mamata Banerjee government which has not exactly read the riot act to the persons and institutions involved in that heinous incident. In fact, the then dean Dr Sandip Ghosh, now arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation, was transferred to another government hospital within hours of the outrage over the incident which he had attempted to pass off as suicide. There have been allegations that the Banerjee government has been shielding men of the Trinamool Congress who may be involved too. And the usually vocal women of the party, the MPs and MLAs, have made only a few expected noises. The proposed legislation, the government must be hoping, will show its intent to come down strongly in cases of rape resulting in death.
Yet, the proposed law, stricter than what currently exists, hardly addresses the core issue of the entrenched culture of misogyny and the utter lack of safe spaces for women both at their workplaces and in the public. The move is, at best, political pragmatism by a woman-led government and, at worst, an attempt to address the complex social scourge of sexual violence with a strict law. Mere legal measures and responses to sexual violence and crimes have not helped as was seen in the aftermath of the Nirbhaya case in 2012. The amendments to the law the following year did not result in fewer cases; in fact, the average of 25,000 cases of rape a year then has escalated to about 31,000 in 2022 – these are only the reported and registered cases. It is not yet another law but the fear of its harshness invoked in every case that acts as a preventive measure. Even this is not enough to address the core issue of entrenched misogyny and patriarchy that sees women only in their bodies and sexual violence as power.
