Democratic Rape

"[The attack] shocked the collective conscience [of India]."
"In these times, when crime against women is on the rise, the courts cannot turn a blind eye toward such gruesome crimes."
Judge Yogesh Khanna, New Delhi

"This is not the victory of truth. But it is the defeat of justice."
The judge has given the death sentence under political pressure."
A.P. Singh, defence lawyer

"The victim and her family have got justice."
"The judge has set an example for anti-social elements that they would meet a similar fate if they committed such crimes."
Indian Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde

Convicted rapists, from left; Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma, Mukesh Singh, AkshayThakur; sentenced to death, convicted of December 2012 gang rape and murder of young New Delhi woman. The Associated Press

Justice Khanna rendered sentencing on Friday. A death sentence for the four men involved in the gang rape and murder of a young woman studying physiotherapy and whose family hoped that her professional ability and future prospects would help to lift them all out of the poverty they lived in. The atrociously brutal attack that has helped India feel the shame of its treatment of women and girls has earned the perpetrators an appointment at the gallows.

Surely it hadn't escaped the notice of those charged with that atrocity that their country was in no mood to forgive, as it has done all too often, the cruel antics of the men in its society against the vulnerable women they shared life with? Perhaps some of them stolidly heard out the verdict, but one cried out in personal anguish. Did he think what he and his friends had perpetrated would be treated with impunity, as in 'boys will be boys'?

One can only wonder if he had heard the anguished cries for help and pain that emanated from their victim as they took turns raping her and then the youngest among them not included in Friday's verdict destroyed her interior bodily organs by inserting a metal rod and deliberately mutilating her beyond hope of life-rescue? Where was their concern, at that time?

Of course remorse comes easily enough when it is realized that one's actions will result in consequences inimical to one's own comfort.

The judge's orders must now go through the legal ritual of confirmation by the country's High Court. It is highly unlikely that India, which last administered the death penalty in 2004 for two people convicted of terrorism, will now halt procedures for the state to withdraw the right-to-life of four men whose combined efforts to destroy an innocent human life has so enraged their countrymen and political elite.

It is the shame, the high-profile publication of the atrocity, if little else that has garnered such attention on the actions of such fine young Indian men. The event itself is not rare. And that is the greater tragedy. That in India today not only are women persecuted because of their gender, pursued by predators, humiliated by an aura of male entitlements, and preyed upon by psychopaths for whom the death of a poverty-stricken child, a young woman aspiring to an education, is less than nothing.

By giving the impression to the young woman and her male escort that the out-of-service bus they were driving about in was in service and prepared to deliver them to their home stops, the two innocents were induced to board a bus which carried five males intent on carrying out a conspiracy of odious violence and the corruption of innocence. The young woman trusting her male friend represented insurance against unwanted male advances.

The young man certain that his presence would restrain any potential dangerous thoughts of harmful action directed against his friend. The four adult males and the fifth teen-ager convinced they could embark on a night of mayhem and viciousness by forcibly restraining and beating the young male passenger, then confining and raping his friend, and disposing of both when the fun was over, by tossing them like trash into the street.

This national tragedy has not been resolved. One single case has been solved with justice administered in its limited way. For justice cannot restore life to the lifeless, nor hope to those who remain vulnerable in a society which largely deplores such inhumanity, yet harbours indifference on the part of those who see male privilege instead of other rarely delivered privileges in a land where misery, privation, inequality and violence still prevails.