You are here

Justice delayed is justice denied

Apr 24,2018 - Last updated at Apr 24,2018

The gang raping and killing of Asifa, an eight-year-old Muslim girl living in the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir, by a group of Hindu men, among whom was a police officer, is understandably touching off a political and religious storm in India, the like of which the country has not seen in recent times.

It is bad enough when a woman or a girl is raped, but when the victim is a child as young as eight years old, and the crime is committed for political reasons aiming to terrorise the Muslim community, then the evilness and repercussions of this heinous crime go beyond the boundaries of India.

The victim was abducted, drugged, starved, raped and then murdered. Her body was discovered on April 14 in a forest. All indications suggest that the terrible crime was not a random rape and murder case, but carefully orchestrated and perpetrated on sectarian grounds.

For a long time, the Hindus, the majority of the population, and the Muslims in India, coexisted in peace and harmony. This coexistence is now in peril.

The religious divide between the Hindus and Muslims have widened in recent times and assumed criminal proportions, as exemplified by the raping and murdering of a Muslim girl as young as eight years.

True the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reacted to this wave of rape crimes by stiffening the sentences and imposing the death penalty if the victim is less than 12 years old, and doubling the punishment for raping a girl under 16 to twenty years in prison, yet, the prosecution of rape cases remains too slow and cumbersome.

As the saying goes, justice delayed is justice denied. India is called upon to do a lot more than changing the criminal code. The country needs systematic campaigns and political platforms against the crime of rape in the strongest possible terms. 

India cannot allow itself to drift to the abyss of religious intolerance and hate crimes, especially directed against the Muslim population.

If India does not act, and act fast on this front, the specter of religious warfare in the country cannot be excluded as a real prospect.

up
40 users have voted.


Newsletter

Get top stories and blog posts emailed to you each day.

PDF