Woman as Victim and Relevance of Law

Bhaskar Majumder

It is known to all concerned all over the world that a young lady doctor-on-duty aged 31 in Kolkata’s R G Kar Hospital was murdered on August 09, 2024 and ‘allegedly’ raped. People are yet to know the motive of the murder and if the doctor was raped or gang-raped.

People do not know yet the employability of the volunteer whose name and face are open to all that probably obeys all clauses in Indian Penal Code (IPC) and other relevant laws as pronounced by the esteemed courts in ascending order–from lower court to High Court to Supreme Court. What remains pending is to know if the face of the parents of the victim can be seen or shown in the public.  Let people know the name of the victim, though the matter of fact is almost every child in the locality where the victim used to live with her parents knows it. The local Councilor of the Panihati Municipality and the MLA were reportedly engaged in cremation of the dead body in haste.

First, why should the face of the parents (father and mother) of the victim be covered or masked in the public domain? Second, why should they be obstructed to interact with people in the public domain? While the second question may be withdrawn for lack of evidence as the parents are by now mobile enough by invitation by the civil society, the first one is very relevant for the question is raised by the innocent mother of the victim in public place, the latest one at Agarpara in a public assembly in the evening of March 30, 2025.  This writer takes the privilege as a responsible elderly citizen of India to raise the same question in the same tune. The highest court is the competent authority to answer.

It seems the purpose to mask the face is to protect the victim and her family from shame in the public place. The identity of a rape victim and her family is protected under Section 228A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). This law prohibits the disclosure of a rape survivor’s identity, including her name, address, and other personal details without her written consent or the permission of a court. Who protects the victim and her family? It is not the court of law–it is the responsibility of the core state to protect. As per the provisions of the Act, police or medical officers can use the information for official purposes without making it public. Supreme Court and High Courts have emphasised that media, police, and authorities must not reveal the identity of the victim.

In case of R G Kar victim, people developed enough doubt about the purpose of protecting the victim and her family. The victim is already dead–as a rarest of the rare cases of murder–it was institutional murder, if not termed ‘state-sponsored’, for post-murder destruction of evidence. And once destroyed, it cannot be retrieved what evidence was there. There are in motion unnumbered gossips among people who constitute political society and cultural society particularly in West Bengal. It seems judicious to leave those gossips here and concentrate on the core point.

The core point is that the society should feel shame–not the parents of the victim. If the number of such victims are counted which is impossible in India even if occasional data are provided by National Crime Bureau Research (NCBR), millions of parents will have to mask their face when they dare to come to public place. The state probably does not rely on the society to protect women in the public place–whatever violence happens inside home is a different episode. The core state is concerned–it needs popular support by hypocrisy-camouflaging-intimidation and all that.

Who is ashamed? Why the parents of the victim must hide their face in the public? Since the victim’s name is not to be disclosed including her face or photos, in the same breath those of her parents are also forbidden as it is cognisable offence through Law. It is also being told that the victim’s parents belong to her family that seems surprising to this writer if not anti-law or anti-common sense. Common sense is hardly common in India, however. It is one thing that dependent parents have right to be economically protected by the adult employed offspring while it is different to say that parents belong to the family of the 31-year-old unmarried lady murdered and allegedly raped by the civic volunteer as institutionally arranged. Disclosure of mother’s name and her open-face does not need any permission from authority when she herself is coming forward to show her face. In India’s cultural society, name of a mother is not much uttered other than local people saying, ‘X kamai/mummy/ma’). In this case, the victim who is no more was the only offspring of her parents–cultural society seems at a loss how to utter ‘X ka Mai’. And the tradition-based cultural identity of the mother of the victim in this case is lost.

The above is part of ‘conspiracy theory’ in absence of any positive information received from the CBI engaged for the purpose.  The concerned citizens of the state have the right to know why masking of the parents of the victim is a binding condition of their survival and the purpose of it.

 Justice is more than and different from law. State represents law, society represents justice. Society is not a unit in law. Hence, state enforces whatever laws it has in its armour that often may hurt the unit of ethics that is society. There is every reason to believe that attack on women is not new in the land of Gandhi-Buddha-Chaitanya–the form has changed from elite priority to democratisation like formation and functioning of brothels from Devadasi system apart from war-related crime on women, sex-slaves and all that. One may read the current phenomena as an offshoot of criminalisation of politics and undermining ethics.

 There are three major stakeholders in this case; one, the victim and her parents, two, the state and its wings including the Judiciary; three, public and the Media. Since in the R G Kar case, the victim is already dead, the first one becomes her parents. Second one is most difficult to decompose for the separation of Judiciary from the integrated core state. The third one is heterogeneous and disintegrated for a number of reasons including the intervention of the core state in the public domain in controlling the media to divert public attention and all that. Basically then, the architect of the game is the core state that, if willing, will destroy evidence or will preserve evidence. And the Judiciary seems helpless in absence of strong evidence in a state that is inherited from colonial document-based era. And documents are collected by the police and public institutions like the CID, CBI etc. The police and public institutions are wings of the core state. This reinforces the opinion that the core state is the architect.

Common people are law-distanced. And they do not have time and capacity to know and understand the implications of the plethora of laws–some of which are colonially derived and some archaic. Of course, they need to know. But who knows the Essential Commodities Act 1955 when they stand in front of the Fair Price Shop? Law and common people are unfriendly–law executing agencies of the state bridges the gap by imprisonment etc.

If human society accepts the fact that social justice is more than and different from law, then the society must have the right to open up the question, among others, why the name or face of the mother of the victim cannot be disclosed when the mother herself is willing for it. Social security is more a social responsibility though the state declares otherwise because of its army of sub-institutions and coercive power through police and so on. People formed the society as well as the state–state in the European frame that India inherited. Therefore, people have natural right to question both the modus operandi of the society and the state. So, what next or, in parallel, what is an alternative to rule by institutional law? It is social mobilisation and social movement for a second renaissance.

[The author is Professor (Retd), G B Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad 211019]

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 45, May 4 - 10, 2025