Two cases surfaced in Kashmir within days of one another, and together they expose a failure that runs deeper than either crime alone. 

In Bandipora, a twelve-year-old girl walking toward an Urs was allegedly taken and sexually assaulted. In Baramulla, a twenty-one-year-old woman says two men gang-raped her, filmed the assault on a mobile phone, and then threatened her into silence. 

Both stories will hold public attention for a week, maybe two. Then something else will take over the news cycle, and both women will be left to live with what happened long after the rest of us have moved on.

That disparity between public attention and private aftermath is the real story here, and Kashmir keeps refusing to look at it honestly. 

Outrage after a rape case has become almost ritual: statements from politicians, segments on television, arguments on social media, demands for the death penalty or chemical castration or some other maximum punishment. 

All of that anger is justified, but none of it explains why sexual violence keeps happening despite more than a decade of legal reform. 

India rewrote its rape laws after the 2012 Delhi gang rape. It built the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita with specific provisions for rape and gang rape. It passed the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences........

© Kashmir Observer