Sexual exploitation of another student by girls. These kinds of headlines make us shiver. Where are we heading to? Is imbibing western culture blindly, doing anything good for us? What is this empowerment doing to our women?

Gone are the days when we used to think and believe that women are like mother Sita, they are always dedicated to their husband, to us the image of women is portrayed as always violated by men. The image of women is portrayed to us as victims. Victims of domestic violence, victims of financial abuse, victims of sexual abuse and always men are projected as the perpetrators.

This is the reason, we see our laws like Domestic Violence or rape to be gender biased. Always projecting women as victims and denying justice to men. These are the kind of news that makes us think, is it any more valid to think of men as the perpetrator always? If not, then why are our laws not gender neutral.

I am sure most of the Indians can’t even think of rape law being gender neutral. They think it is funny to even think of that. The argument of feminists is men can be victims of rape but not by women, only by men. In my analysis, I have already shown that rape law can be gender neutral and it is high time that our rape law is made gender neutral. But I am sure this demand is going to turn to deaf ears except for a few men’s rights activists.

This is the reason we see when a woman is accused of rape, women’s groups come to her rescue, and only if she is proven as a woman, she is discharged of rape charges. We don’t see any justice to these women victims of rape who are raped by other women.

Under these circumstances, I shudder to even think what will happen to male victims of rape. This news item of four influential Lucknow girl sexually exploiting another student should have been written as – “Four girls raping another student”. The only reason, it is not termed as rape is because our rape law is not gender neutral.

So under the present set of laws in India what is the maximum punishment expected for these girls? Maybe with their influence they will be able to arm -twist police and other side and considering their age they will only have to shell out some money to this girl and all charges dropped against the culprits. That’s it. Any man being violated this way for days can’t even expect any remedy. He will not be able to say that to anyone, leave alone expecting any justice. Others around him will laugh at him and if he tells anyone other men would think that those girls should have raped them instead and the guy is so lucky to have raped by so many girls…

Only a rape victim knows what kind of burn one has to go through. If a woman is a victim, so far she could expect justice but under present-day circumstances, a woman can expect justice only when she can prove that a man is a culprit. When a woman is a culprit the victim woman can’t even expect any justice. We have seen in Pinky Pramanik case, how women’s groups and many political organizations have come to the rescue of Pinky, defending her and raising a question on the victim’s morality.

These are the incidents that make us think, do we still want our rape laws to be gender biased and deny justice to these women? Forget about bringing justice to men in the country, our present set of laws can’t even ensure justice to women rape victims always. And we still think women rights groups are actually women-friendly. ha ha ha …