Sunday, October 5, 2008

Why blame the victim?

Soumya Vishwanathan, a 26-year old TV journalist, is shot dead at 3.30 AM in Delhi.

The police have no clue what could have happened, no eye witnesses have come up so far and just about everything is speculation…
I feel shock and dismay at the pretty young thing’s murder.

But there is fuming rage when I think about Sheila Dixit's frivolous remark—that it was ‘adventurous’ on the part of the victim to drive home alone at such an hour. Dixit, a woman herself and the Delhi CM at that, should be slapped for even thinking in such terms.

Why blame the victim when as CM you can't provide safety to the citizens? How much better would it have been if Soumya was murdered in her own house?

But to call driving home from work adventurous (whether the blasted woman clarifies that she meant for both men and women) is merely an outrageous attempt to hide the truth—that the city is not safe at all for anyone. That there is NO law and order situation in Delhi, or just about anywhere in the country, for that matter.

Tomorrow, maybe a businessMAN driving home late could be killed. Will that also be termed adventurous on the victim's part? And two days later another MAN could be killed. Does it make the crime any less heinous if a man were so murdered?
When will this stop being everything else and become an issue of addressing the law and order situation of the state?

Then to go on and say employers should address the safety of employees doing late night shifts. To what level, I ask? In a state where there is no law and order, how difficult is it for a gang of rowdies to ambush a vehicle that has the required escort and 'background-checked', clean driver (as in the case of call centres in B'lore, Pune etc) and kill, loot or rape?

This is just a game of passing the buck. And anyone who falls for such a cheap game should also be shot—point blank.

2 comments:

Sav said...

Found it incredible that the woman actually said something like that. And now -- after raving a lot on the same lines as you -- I am putting it down to jealousy. I mean, here's this young woman: independent, confident and with her own car. If circumstances demand, she doesn't hesitate to drive in the city late in the night. Could Sheila DIxit ever dream of doing such a thing when she was 26? That is where the jealousy kicks in...
Well more seriously, I wouldn't be surprised to see this spiralling into character assassination on the lines of the Arushi case...

Rohini said...

In all probability, i'm sure, sav. But the media seems to be maintaining some decency this time, cos the girl is one of their's (or ours). So a character assasination would only be like spitting at yourselves :D

And jealousy, huh? ;-)