Crime against the soul of our societies

India was in crisis this week after a seven-year-old girl became the latest victim in a country where a rape is reported to be taking place in every 13 minutes.   

According to reports the seven-year-old girl is in a critical condition at a New Delhi hospital after undergoing surgery for injuries she suffered while being raped. Her mother was by her bedside after the girl underwent hours of surgery. It is alleged a metal pipe was used in the sex assault.  
A 21-year-old has been arrested in connection with the rape, which occurred in the district of Shahdara in the north-eastern part of the city.   

The girl was in extreme pain after the attack, said Swati Maliwal, chairwoman of the Delhi Commission for Women. She told the Cable News Network (CNN) “We are working out her rehabilitation plan. It is very unfortunate that these rape cases are not ending in Delhi. Police resources continue to be extremely low in Delhi.”  

In a series of tweets, Ms. Maliwal provided additional details of the attack, saying the girl, who comes from a poor family, had been lured to a park in Seemapuri, where the perpetrator assaulted her.   

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there were 39,000 rapes in India in 2016 -- a rate of roughly one rape every 13.5 minutes. The total marked a 12% spike over the previous year, CNN reported.   

On September 20, a Haryana court imprisoned a 20-year old youth who abducted, raped and brutally murdered a six-year-old girl in Uklana town of the state on December 8 last year, the Hindustan Times reported. The court also fined the youth Rs. 80,000. He was a minor when he committed the crime, but is an adult now.   

Pointing out that after raping the girl, the accused had murdered her in a barbaric manner by inserting a wooden stick in her private parts, the judge observed that the crime falls in the category of the rarest of the rare cases, but he could not pronounce a death sentence as the accused was a juvenile when the crime was committed. The court said, “It is a crime against the holy body of a girl child and the soul of the society and such a crime is aggravated by the manner in which it has been committed. The nature of the crime and the manner in which it has been committed speaks about its uncommonness,” the newspaper reported.   

India, the second largest country in the world is widely regarded as the home of religions and for such horrible crimes to take place there, raises questions as to where the world is heading.   

In Sri Lanka reports last year said that a rape of a woman takes place every four hours and most of them are school children. The trend is increasing. Southern Province Governor Marshal Perera making this disclosure quoting Police reports said socio-economic conditions and standards of education should be lifted to save women and girls from this threat.  

Worldwide also we see a rise in sexual crimes against children, young girls and women with the United States President Donald Trump being widely regarded as a cad. His Supreme Court nominee judge Brett Kavanaugh has been accused by psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford of brutally raping her while they were in high school some 30 years ago. The issue is to come up before the US Senate judiciary committee next week and has lead to an intensified campaign by the so-called “Me too” movement comprising girls or women who were sexually assaulted by VIPs and others.   

The cause or causes are complex and world religion leaders need to come together and see what is going wrong in this era of modern technology where as often before in history, as Shakespeare said, judgment has fled to brutish beasts and people appear to be losing theie reason.