An Unspeakable Atrocity

"Boys will be boys. They make mistakes." 
"[The Samajwadi Party is opposed to the law calling for gang rapists to be executed]"
Mulayam Singh Yadav, head Uttar Pradesh state governing Samajwadi Party

New Delhi protest, CNN

It does seem like a dreadfully harsh sentence. Particularly for boys. But in India there is a culture of rape, one that the sternest laws appear incapable of turning around. Much like the Indian caste system in the Hindu faith that believes in lower and higher castes, the former in thrall to the latter. And though India has long since declared that the traditional oppression of its Dalit lower caste be outlawed, the Dalit remain mired in poverty, shunned by the higher classes, held in universal contempt.

And it was two young Dalit girls, cousins, aged 14 and 15 whose bodies were discovered hanging from a mango tree in Katra village in Utter Pradesh on Wednesday. The girls had been gang-raped, strangled, then their bodies hanged from the tree. One might imagine that the perpetrators would be aware of the horror their act would elicit from the villagers. Might they have been so certain that there would be no penalty for their barbaric act that they could boast of the atrocity by hanging the girls in full public view?

In India fifty percent of the population has no access to toilets. People exit their homes to defecate and to urinate in the out-of-doors; railway tracks, open fields, forests, wherever they can manage to evacuate the waste their bodies produce. Public and personal hygiene is difficult to maintain when not even group facilities are available for the use of the public, at a close range to where they live. Other than to venture forth, as the girls did, doubtless together for company.

Two girls, cousins, 14 and 15 are seen hanging from a tree Katra village in Uttar Pradesh state, India, 28 May 2014, in still taken from Reuters video

It was said that they had been abducted from the field where they had gone to relieve themselves. In the full sight of others engaged in the same activity. Brutally bold, uncaring. But boys will be boys. And in this particular instance, some of the boys, said to number seven in total, were police officers. The unspeakable vile atrocity of men abducting, defiling and murdering children has left their community and the international community as well, aghast with disbelief.

For these barbarians without souls the death penalty seems rather appropriate. The villagers accused the chief of police at the local station of having ignored the concern expressed by the father of one of the girls when they hadn't returned. When the girls' bodies had been discovered, villagers gathered around the tree, refusing to disperse or to permit the bodies to be taken down until the suspects had been arrested.

Two of the four men so far arrested are police officers. Although the girls were from the "untouchables", that didn't mean they would be left untouched; it meant that in Indian tradition, they were of such a low status that it hardly mattered what became of them; Dalits are thought to be easy prey for predators. In India the protection of women from the predatory drive of men without conscience must overturn a long tradition of discriminatory and violent oppression.

The men accused of this despicable crime come from the influential Yadav upper caste. Brothers Pappu and Awadhesh Yadav considered the instigators, were arrested. Constables Chhatrapal Yadav and Sarvesh Yadav were fired from the jobs. Four others, Urvesh Yadav, policeman Chhatrapal Yadav and two persons unidentified remain at large.

The father of one of the young girls claims that when he went to the police station to ask that Yadav's house be searched, the constables "took the side of the culprits".

Had they reacted in a timely manner, the father says, the girls might have been saved.