How serious is PM Modi’s concern for crimes against women?

The latest report of Crime in India, released in December 2023 by the National crime Records Bureau (NCRB), reported that national capital Delhi recorded the highest number of crimes against women (14,158) among 19 metropolitan cities in the country in 2022. This included 1,204 cases of rape, NCRB data showed. Though Delhi Police reports directly to the Union home ministry, neither the home minister nor the prime minister has ever spoken about the situation.

However, addressing the nation from the Red Fort on Thursday, 15 August, the prime minister declared that people were angry at the rising incidence of crimes against women and that he could feel the rage. He blamed the media for not highlighting punishments awarded to perpetrators prominently enough, and instead giving wide publicity to the crime itself. The punishments needed to be highlighted to strike fear among criminals and to make them aware of consequences.

The PM’s words did not carry much conviction because despite horrendous crimes against women in Manipur and ethnic violence reported from there, he or his government have done very little to make the state ruled by his party safe for women.

He has, of course. not visited the state even once in the last 15 months since May 2023. Similarly, the BJP government in Gujarat not only recommended the remission of life sentence awarded to the perpetrators of the gang-rape victim Bilkis Bano but also failed to oppose petitions for parole filed by rape convicts like Gurmeet Ram Rahim and Asaram Bapu.

Gurmeet Ram Rahim had famously called upon his supporters to support the BJP in 2014. Since then he has consistently courted the BJP and is invariably released on parole at regular intervals, often before crucial elections in Punjab and Haryana. He had often been photographed too in the company of the former Haryana chief minister and now a union minister Manohar Lal Khattar.

The head of the Dera Sachha Sauda, an influential sect in Haryana, was convicted of raping two women followers and sent to prison for 20 years in 2018. In 2019, he was sentenced to life for the murder of a journalist and in 2021, he received another life sentence for the 2002 murder of one of his employees. Asaram Bapu was also convicted of raping women in his ashram, one of them a teenager, and his supporters have flaunted his photographs with the prime minister.

BJP-ruled states have performed no better in curbing crimes against women. In fact, in 2021, the highest number of cases of crimes against women were lodged in Uttar Pradesh (56,083) followed by Rajasthan (40,738), Maharashtra (39,526), West Bengal (35,884) and Odisha 31,352, the NCRB records indicated. In terms of rate of crime against women, Assam (168.3) was on the top of the list for 2021, followed by Delhi (147), Odisha (137), Haryana (119.7) and Telangana (111.2).

Under-utilisation of the Nirbhaya Fund, set up after the gruesome gang rape and murder of a young physiotherapist in Delhi, is also cited by critics to point out the government’s indifference to women’s safety. Since the fund was set up in 2013, till the end of 2022 as much as 30 per cent of the Rs 6,000 Crore fund had not been disbursed. The money under the fund was to be utilised for establishing one stop centres, making safety devices, setting up fast-track courts, counselling and to procure forensic kits for sexual assault cases among others.

The prime minister’s silence on cases involving BJP leaders has also been damning. He failed to condemn the Unnao rape case in Uttar Pradesh, in which a BJP law-make Kuldeep Sengar was an accused. He kept quiet when the BJP openly supported the Kathua rape-accused in Jammu or when UP police cremated the body of a rape victim at Hathras against the wishes of the deceased’s family.

With public outrage growing in Kolkata following the rape and murder of a doctor last week, the PM has spoken. He had also spoken out earlier this year when women at Sandeshkhali in West Bengal had alleged sexual assaults and molestation allegedly by Trinamool Congress workers.

On both these occasions, the BJP has supported demands to dismiss the state government headed by Mamata Banerjee and impose President’s Rule. Is the PM’s address from the Red Fort also indicative of political considerations rather than any genuine concern for women’s safety, is the question.