He Knew Her !

Goa if one may put it kindly, has become a theatre of the absurd.

A young Russian woman working for a Goa five start hotel was allegedly raped by a minor local politician who offered to give her a lift to her home on completion of her shift. Instead of reaching her home directly, the scoundrel raped her first.

Now if one follows the news in Goa, this is in itself not unusual. Politicians in Goa and their families and anyone remotely connected to them seem to have discovered a variant of the ancient Norman privilege of 'droit de signeur'. In this case it being "if you come to my area of God's earth and talk to me, I have the right to rape you."

How else can one interpret an investigating cop saying in a local newspaper "This is not a major issue. She knew the person who raped her." Ah! we get it now. If you are in Goa, and you are female, if someone knows you, it is acceptable that he rape you. What if, Mr. Policeman, your wife is in conversation with the vegetable vendor in the Mapusa market every Friday buying vegetables from him. Is it OK for him to rape her on that basis?

As if to endorse what this policeman said, another more prominent politician and a government minister to boot, a mentor of the accused has gone on record in connection with this incident as saying something like 'these single women come on vacations here and ask to be raped'.

In Goa it is not only the culprit who commits the crime and his family and friends who abet him. The police and minsiters too will further victimize the victim.

Take away the Goa background of this despicable crime and we see exposed the Indian mentality of "she deserved it" or "she asked for it". Essentially this means that a woman has to severely curtail her freedom of action and movement - indeed her freedom of speech if she is not to be taken as inviting rape on herself. She is expected to demurely look down while she walks and glance away from anyone speaking to her.

The time is ripe for progressive judges to bring the real law down in the Indian courts. The concept that you may know a woman, be intimate with her even, but if she says the word no at any time, sex after that will be considered rape.

Of course there will be the comedians who will quickly interject to tell us that with most Indian females and sex, the word "no" usually means "yes". Well how about you being in a sex-starved prison and that mean and huge lifer in the next cell thinking on the same lines about you. "Oh the new fellow doesn't know how deprived (and depraved) this prison population is. If he did, he wouldn't mind being my bitch"

Meanwhile you young western or light-skinned woman, go elsewhere. Not beacause you have no right to go to Goa or have no right to be protected, but merely because there are a million better places where you can enjoy your vacations, without the risk of a rape and the trauma that usually accompanies it in the parcel of what was once God's own earth in a land called India.