Open the daily newspaper and you would find at least five to six incidents of crime against women in different parts of the country. Most common is rape or gang rape. Often the rape victims are killed and that too inhumanly. Rape, once a forbidden term, is now on the lips of even teenagers, even among children younger than them. Even during Nandigram movement in West Bengal, we had seen the then CPI (M)-run government using, for the first time in the history of the country, using rape and gang-rape of innocent women to suppress a legitimate mass movement.
In our country, as per the government statistics, one crime against a woman is reported every minute. Beside rape, there are other ferocities perpetrated against women unthinkable in a civilized society. These atrocities encompass a wide range of physical, psychological, and economic abuse rooted in male chauvinism. These violations occur within families, communities, in educational institutions, at offices, on streets, even in the administration including police and military and in most cases state remains an accomplice. To mention a few categories of assault are female foeticide, and infanticide, dowry violence and murder, femicide, acid attacks, intimate partner violence, female genital mutilation, honour killings, child and women trafficking, forced child marriage, online and technology facilitated violence like cyberbullying, cyberstalking, doxing (releasing private information), and the non-consensual distribution of intimate images, structural violence that occurs owing to the system stemming from discriminatory laws, customs and policies. This can include misogynistic speech, unequal pay, and restrictions on women’s freedom of movement, and it influences and perpetuates individual acts of violence. Violence in war – in situations of war and armed conflict, women are deliberately targeted with acts of sexual violence, sexual slavery, and forced pregnancy as weapons of war. Even children in the age of even as low as of one month, six months, one year, and so on are subjected to such sexual assault. What is more shameless is that as many as 151 sitting MPs and MLAs face cases of crimes against women. This is the kind of rot the worn out capitalist system is breeding day in and day out.
Ironically, the vote-based bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties raise finger at each other for such ghastly crimes against the women. If BJP is in power in one state, the Congress, TMC, CPI (M) etc. are vociferous in accusing the government. On the other hand, when any such incident occurs in TMC-ruled West Bengal or CPI (M)-ruled Kerala, the BJP raises its pitch of protest to decibels. Point is that such is only but natural for all of them subservient to bourgeois class interest and attuned to bourgeois vote politics. Based on the latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) for 2023, Uttar Pradesh reported the highest number of crimes against women. While Maharashtra is the secondhighest state by volume, Rajasthan ranks third followed by West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh. Four of the five states named here have the BJP in power. To avert the allegation, the UP and Maharashtra governments have come out with an immediate excuse that states with larger populations, like Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, will naturally have a higher volume of crimes. The UP government also boasts of more number of reported crimes. So does the West Bengal government as well.
On the other hand, as per state police report, incidents of rape in Kerala have been on an upward trend over the past decade, with recent years showing a significant increase. Major cases often involve victims knowing their abusers, and a high proportion of victims are minors. Just a few days back, 11 criminals accused of raping pregnant Bilkis Banu during Gujarat pogrom who were released from the jail through manipulation were felicitated by the Hindutva activists. Likewise, BJP leader and MLA Kuldeep Singh Senger of Unnao in UP abducted and violated a minor girl at his residence in 2017. Hathras gangrape case of 2020 the murdered victim so called dalit girl was cremated by the police in the wee hours without complying with the formalities and also without consent of her family. Hathras SC-ST court acquitted three out of four accused persons citing lack of evidence and convicted one person for culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The handling of the investigation by the UP Police—including the victim’s hurried cremation against her family’s wishes—sparked national outrage and led to accusations of a cover-up by the state’s BJP government. Some observers held that the officials sided with the upper-caste perpetrators due to political reliance of the BJP on upper-caste voters. Sakinaka rape and murder (2021) and Beed gang rape of a minor by 400 men over seven months (2021) are two gruesome cases that happened in Maharashtra. A Beed gang rape survivor’s decade-long fight for justice faced a setback as the Bombay High Court overturned her attackers’ conviction, even as she continued to battle social ostracism. According to data, over 200 cases of gang rape were registered between January and June 2025. Tragically, five girls were even murdered after being raped during this period. An 18-year-old dalit girl of Pathanamthitta, Kerala had accused 64 men of sexually abusing her since she was 13 years old. Brutal murder and gang rape case of a Post Graduate Trainee doctor inside R G Kar Medical College and Hospital created a chilly flutter throughout the country. But the alleged culprits have not been meted out stringent punishment till date because of their stated closeness with the ruling party. Just the other day, a second-year MBBS student of a private medical college in West Bengal’s West Bardhaman district was allegedly dragged outside her college campus and raped at night. No arrests have been made yet in this connection, the police said. While commenting on the case, the TMC chief minister of the state asked why she was out at midnight (fact is the victim ventured out in the evening around 7.30 pm). One would recall that in Nirbhaya Damini’s case of Delhi the then Delhi Police Chief Neeraj Kumar said: “Women should not go out late at night.” Incredible indeed! The victim is demonized and not the culprit. Whose responsibility is it to protect the women? Is it not of the police-administration of a government if it is a civilized one? Yogi Adityanath, the BJP chief minister of UP, wrote that “women are not capable of being left free or independent. Their energy should be regulated, lest it become worthless and destructive.” During the CPI (M) rule in West Bengal in 1990 when a female government officer was raped, murdered and her naked body thrown into a paddy field by the miscreants, Jyoti Basu, the then chief minister, downplayed the severity of the incident, describing it as “commonplace” and suggesting that such “anti-social acts” happen everywhere. See, all of them see eye to eye in so far as skirting their own responsibility for providing safety to women is concerned. And riding on their casual approach and aversion towards taking stringent action against the anti-socials involved in crime against womenkind, safety of women is at stake.
No one is a born criminal or rapist. It is the decrepit morally crippled capitalist society which is turning the individuals into criminals and rapists.
The system is abetting objectification of women through spread of obscenity and vulgarism through every media of communication—whether it is book, or film or TV or social media— incessantly fomenting sex-perversion and depraved mindset and thereby making dignity of the women vulnerable to outrage. The votebased bourgeois petty-bourgeois political parties in order to either stay in or rise to power rear gangs of criminals and anti-socials who work as their foot soldiers for orchestrating violence during election, intimidating political opponents, terrorizing people when needed and running rackets for various offences including extortion, pilferage of public money and so forth.
The criminals also seek to rally behind the ruling parties to enjoy licence to do anything and remain unscathed from punitive action. So, the question of ensuring safety, security, honour and dignity of the women is inseparably linked with the struggle for overthrowing this stenchful capitalist society.
