Expressing concern over the increasing incidents of rapes in the country, the Supreme Court on Tuesday said that women are being raped “left, right and centre.”
“What is to be done? Girls and women are getting raped left, right and centre,” the bench said,” a bench comprising Justices M B Lokur, Deepak Gupta and K M Joseph said.
Referring to the recent Muzaffarpur shelter home abuse case, where girls were allegedly raped and sexually abused, the apex court pulled up the Bihar government for funding an NGO which ran the shelter.
Over 30 girls were allegedly raped and abused at the shelter home in Muzaffarpur run by chief of the state-funded NGO Brajesh Thakur.
Referring to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, the bench said 38,947 women were raped in India in 2016 and that every six hours, a woman is raped in India.
Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) conducted an audit of shelter homes and informed the apex court that “grave concerns” have been raised about 15 such institutions in Bihar out of 110 in the state.
Not just Muzaffarpur, another such case was reported, where 24 girls were rescued from a shelter home in Uttar Pradesh’s Deoria, after one of the girls fled from the home and reached a police station and narrated her ordeal.
Also read: Deoria shelter home abuse: Rescued girls narrate ordeal
On July 18, Union Minister Kiren Rijiju said that as many as 1,10,333 cases of rape were registered in the country between 2014-16.
As many as 38,947 cases of rape were registered in 2016, 34,651 cases of rape in 2015 and 36,735 cases of rape in 2014.
In 2016, 3,38,954 cases of crime against women were registered in 2016, 3,29,243 cases of crime in 2015 and 3,39,457 such cases were registered in 2014.
Violence against women is on a rise since the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP government came to power in 2014. The government has utterly failed at providing protection to the women of the country.