The horror of a particularly brutal sexual assault in Bihar’s Begusarai has once again provoked national outrage and revived memories of the crime that shook Delhi and India in December 2012. Such comparisons are understandable. Yet the more important question is not whether one crime resembles another. It is whether the country has built institutions capable of preventing such violence and responding effectively when it occurs. Thirteen years after the Delhi gang rape transformed the national conversation on women’s safety, India finds itself confronting an uncomfortable reality.

The legal system changed significantly. Criminal laws were strengthened, definitions of sexual offences expanded, punishments were enhanced and fast-track courts introduced. Public awareness increased, reporting improved, and sexual violence became a subject of sustained public scrutiny rather than occasional outrage. What did not change with equal urgency was the everyday functioning of institutions that stand between a victim and justice. The recurring pattern in many serious crimes against women is not merely the brutality of the offenders but the sequence of institutional failures that often follows. Delayed police action,........

© The Statesman