The Latest Was a Spanish Tourist: How Did India Become the 'Democracy of Raping Women'?

The Spanish couple, Vicente and Fernanda, have made a habit of visiting countries and exploring different civilizations, documenting their global tours from one country to another and from one continent to another.

On their recent journey, they traveled extensively through Asian countries, from Afghanistan to Pakistan, Myanmar, and ultimately to Bangladesh, in a tour that was safe and reassuring until their fates led them to India.

On March 2, 2024, while traversing the Dumka area in the Indian state of Jharkhand on a motorcycle from the West Bengal state to neighboring Nepal, Vicente and Fernanda couldn't find a nearby hotel for accommodation, opting instead to camp amidst the natural surroundings in Dumka.

It didn't take long before Vicente and Fernanda were ambushed by a group of Indian men, who assaulted the couple before subjecting Fernanda to a two-hour ordeal of rape by seven men.

Immediately after the incident, the couple posted on their Instagram account the details of what happened to them, mentioning that they were threatened with "knives at their throats" during the attack in India.

They added that Fernanda was raped and taken to the hospital for DNA testing, bearing visible signs of severe beating and assault.

The woman displayed bruises on her face, saying, "This is what my face looks like, but it's not what hurts me the most. I thought I was going to die."

Stigmatization of India

In another video, the husband said, "My mouth was shattered, but my wife suffered worse than me. They hit me with a helmet several times, with a stone on my head."

Both Vicente and his wife have over 250,000 followers on Instagram, and they have traveled on their motorcycles over 170,000 kilometers through 66 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Germany, Bulgaria, Afghanistan, Oman, the UAE, Turkiye, Iraq, and others.

The Indian police later arrested the seven suspects and offered the couple a paltry compensation of 10,000 Indian rupees ($120).

However, the incident continues to resonate within and outside India, sparking widespread outrage, especially considering that the country, the world's most populous and touted as the largest democracy, has been witnessing a surge in cases of rape and assaults against women for years.

How do women in India live under such circumstances? What is the nature of the assaults against women there? And why hasn't Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government taken concrete steps to stop this phenomenon that has tarnished India's global image?

Shocking Figures

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party government claims to have been combating high rates of violence against women for years, with a significant number of prominent rape cases even involving foreign visitors, drawing international attention to the issue.

In 2018, a British woman was raped while walking back to her hotel in the western state of Goa, a popular tourist destination.

Two years prior, in 2016, an American woman was drugged and raped by a group of men in her five-star hotel room in the capital, New Delhi.

In 2013, six men were sentenced to life imprisonment for the gang rape of a Swiss tourist.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau of India, over 31,000 rape cases were reported in 2022, averaging around 86 cases per day, with warnings that the reported number is only a small portion of the actual number.

On January 10, 2020, Deutsche Welle published a report on these incidents, stating that India is one of the worst places for women, with government data indicating that a woman is raped every 15 minutes.

The annual crime report for India released by the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2022 recorded approximately 34,000 reported rape cases.

The report noted that about 85 percent of these cases resulted in charges being filed, with only 27 percent resulting in convictions.

The 2012 Incident

The gang rape and murder of a young Indian woman on a bus in the capital, New Delhi, in 2012 is one of the most brutal incidents to have occurred in recent years.

The incident sparked widespread outrage, leading hundreds of thousands to take to the streets across India in protest and condemnation.

The tragic event prompted film stars and politicians to demand stricter measures, resulting in harsher penalties and the establishment of new courts to expedite cases of violence against women, including rape. However, all this has not alleviated the issue.

Another significant incident occurred in 2017 when a minor girl was raped by Kuldeep Singh Sengar, a former member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, and the girl attempted suicide after accusing the police of negligence. What's worse, the ruling party member attempted to kill the girl.

Five months before Sengar's conviction in December 2017, protection was provided to the girl's family after their car was hit by a truck, injuring her and killing two of her relatives.

One of the reasons for the rise in this phenomenon in India, as stated by Indian women's rights activists to CNN on March 4, 2024, is that authorities take crimes against women less seriously. This, coupled with the fact that most judges are male and there are only a few forensic laboratories in the country, exacerbates the situation.

It seems that the fast-track courts established in response to the 2012 incident haven't changed much. A study conducted by the Center for Law and Policy Research in Bangalore in 2015 revealed that while fast-track courts indeed handle cases more quickly, they haven't addressed a significant number of cases.

CNN reported on a study conducted in 2016, which found that these courts take an average of over 8 months to adjudicate each case, which is four times longer than the recommended period.

In this context, some attribute the delay to the shortage of judges in these courts.

It was noted that government statistics do not encompass all rape cases, as reporting rape remains taboo in some parts of India and because rape cases ending in murder are only counted as homicides.

Gujarat Scandal

On August 28, 2022, widespread protests erupted across India following the government's decision to release 11 Hindu individuals who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the gang rape of a Muslim woman named Bilkis Bano.

The woman had been raped and 14 of her relatives murdered amidst riots between Hindus and Muslims in the state of Gujarat in 2002.

The victim, Bilkis Bano, was three months pregnant when she was raped by these men, who also killed members of her family, including her three-year-old daughter.

These atrocities occurred during the riots that engulfed the state and resulted in the deaths of over a thousand people, mostly Muslims.

Notably, the current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, was serving as the Chief Minister of Gujarat at the time of the crime, and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party still governed the state.

The release of the perpetrators of the Gujarat scandal sparked anger among many Indian community activists. 

Indian film star and women's rights campaigner Shabana Azmi told AFP news agency in the capital Delhi: "What happened with Bilkis Bano, what happened to her family, we cannot stand and watch this happen to our country. That is why we will all come together and raise our voices."

"This misogyny and patriarchy has grown so much and has been normalized to the point that now rape is normal for people," said Aditi, a student protester.

Meanwhile, over 100 retired civil servants separately wrote to the Chief Justice of India, saying that the release of the rapists would have a chilling effect on the safety of all women.

On December 14, 2022, EuroNews, affiliated with the European Union, published a report on cases of rape against women in India, describing it as a nightmare and dubbing the recent years as the decade of mass rape of Indian women.