On a Saturday evening this month, an 11-year-old girl left her home for a friend’s birthday party in a small town in eastern India. She never returned.
She was kidnapped, raped, bundled into a sack and thrown into a pond by a gang of men while still alive, according to a local investigating police officer.
The assault was the latest example of the brutal sexual violence that is endemic across India, with over 80 rapes reported to police every day, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau. Many more assaults go unreported because of victim blaming and shaming, activists say.
Deep-seated patriarchy and misogyny, understaffed police forces and severe judicial delays contribute to many perpetrators believing they can escape punishment for assaulting women. That sense of impunity feeds into the unrelenting spread of such cases, activists say.
The gang rape of a student in Delhi in 2012 triggered sweeping legal reforms, including more severe punishments for those convicted and fast-track courts. India’s economy has surged since then and the nation has been propelled into the ranks of the world’s elite, but its dismal record on sexual violence remains unchanged.
In Baruipur, stunned locals, her 46-year-old father among them, watched as the girl’s lifeless body covered in bite marks and bruises was pulled from the trash-strewn pond on the morning of July 5, a day after she went missing, according to interviews with the police and residents.
“My mind is not working. I have not been able to think straight in days,” the girl’s father told Reuters.
Reuters is withholding the identities of the victim and her family because Indian law bars the disclosure of details that could identify survivors or victims in such cases.
The incident has put Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party on the spot just months after it took power for the first time in West Bengal state, where Baruipur is located, with women’s safety among its top poll promises.
But activists say no change of government can fix deep-rooted failures such as the patriarchy that rules most Indian communities, the lack of gender-progressive administrators in the police and judiciary and sexual violence tied to caste hierarchies.