UP's problem isn't that women aren't safe. It's that netas don't care

Fear factor

The court also observed that in three months there have been at least five incidents of rape and in some of them, the police had not even lodged an FIR.

While some reports quoting State Crime Records Bureau said that there was a 161% increase in rape cases in UP in 2014-15, the state police disputed the figures.

The National Crime Records Bureau data showed a 121% increase in rape cases in the state from 2010 to 2014.

While there were 1,563 cases of rape in 2010, the number jumped to 3,467 in 2014.

In comparison, India recorded a 65% increase in cases of rape across the country.

Excuses?

The state police has an explanation to offer on the increase in these dastardly acts. The data on rape, said a police officer posted at the police headquarters in Lucknow, can at times be misleading.

"At times you will find a spurt in rape cases. That invariably happens when these cases are honestly registered by the police," he said.

This implies that a decline in rape cases was on an account of non-registration of the crime, which some station officers or inspectors would be doing under instructions from the top.

Or, he would be doing to project a crime-free image of the area under his charge. A lot depends on the district police chief and other senior officers, the police officer said.

"To complicate a clear understanding of rape-related data, there are false cases of rape which also lead to a spike in the numbers," he added.

We are kept wondering if the increase in rape cases is due to the honesty of the policemen or the consequence of some spurned women trying to frame men.

Village politics gives another dimension to rape cases, the officer explained. Villagers, he said, could go to any extent, even cry rape, to settle scores with local rivals. In such cases, the girl becomes an unsuspecting 'victim'.

Aren't we forgetting some people?

What the officer did not talk about was the mindset of the state's politicians who tend to trivialise a crime as heinous as rape.

Urban development minister Azam Khan described the Bulandshahr rape as an act committed by the opposition to defame Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's government. The chief minister tended to agree with his party's Muslim face.

Mulayam Singh Yadav, the Samajwadi Party patriarch in 2015 had shocked the nation with his remark that gang rape by four men was not possible.

He had also opposed the anti-rape legislation which was introduced after Delhi's Nirbhaya case. The legislation provides for death to rapists.

The SP supremo had argued in 2014 that, "boys will be boys, they make mistakes" and should not be hanged for their mistakes.

Edited by Jhinuk Sen

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