A series Of Recent High-Profile Gang Rape Cases India Has Ignited A Debate

Are gang rape cases on the rise in India or is it simply that more attention is being paid to a problem long hidden with in the families and villages. The answer experts say is both. Moderinization isd fueling the crisis of sexual-assault in India. with increasing independent women now working in factories and officers and stepping beyond the subservient roles to which they had traditionally been relegated. They are also more likely than their mothers and grandmothers were to reoport rapes and more likely to encounter strangers in public. " We never used to see so many cases of gang-rape and so many involving groups of young unemployed men," said a supreme court lawyer. who specialkizes in women issues. The silence broke in December when a New Delhi student was gang-raped on a bus particularly in a vicious attack from wehich she died two weeks later. A juneline court on Satureday handed down ythe first conviction in the case, sdending a teenager to reform home for three years for rape and murder. The sentence maximum a juvenile can face, was widely denounced as too linient, and the girl's [arents vowed to appeal. The Tourism Ministry launched a compaign nationwide "I respect Women" after a Swiss bicyclist was gang-raped in central India and an American women was gang-raped two months later in ther northern resort town of Manali. Yet another high-profile gang-rape last month against a photojournalist on assignment in Mambai, renewed the public fury and sent the media into 24/7 cverage marked by daily front page headlines and talk shows debating how to make India safe for women. All five accused in the Mambai attack case had little or no education and three had previously been arrested for theft, Mambai police said. They live in the slums near the abondoned textile mills where the woman was raped. The biggest change is that women in the middle class are reporting crimes to police. "Thirty years ago even utterring the word 'rape' was almost taboo, thatr is changing" said Ranjana Kumari a women's activist. There are so many cases, each more gruesome than the other and people have lost patience, especially when no justice is served. The photojournalist attavck last month stunned the nation by telling local media that "rape is not the end of life" -- a groundbreaking statement given that many rape victims are still often dismissed as defiled. Many are shunned by their families, fired from jobs or driven from their home village. As a result many rape victims are though to remain silent.