Dear Mr Narendra Modi,
A mother-daughter duo was brutally raped last Saturday by a gang of seven-eight robbers for three hours. Surprisingly, they were not alone, neither were they kidnapped.
Instead they were safely traveling in a car with their whole family (including her father and uncle), when they were stopped on the Kanpur highway and raped horrifically for three hours as the men of the family watched helplessly.
"Papa!" was what the girl had cried out when her attackers tried to catch her," her tearful father told journalists as he narrated the most unfortunate experience of his life. He says that he wouldn't be able to look his daughter in the eye.
I got goose bumps as I read about that story and ever since after that I am getting sleepless nights. As a mother of a five-year-old daughter I am worried for the safety of my child, but what do I tell her? That she is not safe even if she is with her family. And, she should not only be worried about strangers when she is alone!
At five years of age, my daughter still doesn’t understand the difference between a good stranger and a bad stranger. Just the other day she told me “Mumma, some lady strangers are not bad.” So, the point to be noted is that we are dealing with small kids here who do not understand the difference between right and wrong, who perhaps don’t even know why their mothers are so worried about “their safety”.
I don’t need to tell you that little kids like my daughter live in their own imaginative world and they are so innocent that they can’t gauge danger around them.
The 13-year-old girl who was raped that day has been getting high fever every day after that horrible incident and the family has been force-feeding her. She’d be out of school for God knows how many days after this and this trauma would stay with her for life. And she is not alone. There are so many such incidents that happen every day in our country in the cities as well as the rural areas.
My problem as a mother and a citizen of this country is that while we are all going crazy about the passing of the various important bills and other “crucial things” that need the nation’s attention, why are we not doing anything for the safety of our girls? Doesn’t that interest the whole nation? Is the safety of women not that important to the leaders of this country?
So, as a mother I want an assurance from you and not just in words, but in action. I want you to take swift action against the Bulandshahr rape case and in other cases that might crop up in the future and punish the culprits not tomorrow, not next month, but TODAY.
Set an example so that other insane men like in this case think twice before performing such heinous crimes. Please don’t wait and let the political parties and the media create a circus around the poor family and mock at their ordeal.
Please don’t let this case be buried in the FIR records. Please take action… for me, for my daughter and for every other woman of this country.
Awaiting justice,
An anxious Indian mother
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