Protectors turning predators is a shocking but not rare event. What makes the Muzaffarpur shelter home incident appalling and chilling is the scale of systematic abuse underage girls were suffering till it was detected by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. The Bihar government has failed in its fundamental role of guardianship. Many of the 34 girls who were routinely tortured, drugged and raped were orphans.
The state’s welfare department was funding the shelter home run by a politically ‘well-connected’ NGO, turning a blind eye to the horrific fiction of ‘shelter’ they created around a helpless group. Anywhere else this would have shaken the powers-that-be. But here the chief minister has gotten away by ordering a CBI probe, as if that’s the end of his responsibility. The stories of rape and abuse are so gory that they would have been considered unprintable had they not been a piece of news.
Will the new amendment to the Criminal Law Bill passed by the Lok Sabha a few days ago, which seeks the death sentence for child rape convicts, deter future incidents? The brutal rape of a girl, named Nirbhaya by the nation, in a Delhi bus got us a set of stringent laws. Did it prove to be a deterrent? In Delhi alone, where the Nirbhaya gang rape happened, there has been a 277 per cent rise in rape reports, and that’s not even counting the first quarter of 2018.
The recent amendment too is a response to the public outcry after two brutal cases of rape were reported from Kathua, Jammu, and Unnao, UP. Domain experts feel that had the death clause been legislated upon before the Muzaffarpur incident came to light, the girls may not have survived their ordeal. They could have been murdered as well to avoid detection of the original crime. As it is, data shows girls often suffer sexual abuse from people within their proximate circles. Besides, both boys and girls in shelter homes have been known to be vulnerable. Supervisory bodies slip up on their duty. The system needs to work for any law to be effective.