Nearly a month after the rape and murder of a trainee doctor in Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, the Aparajita Woman and Child (West Bengal Criminal Laws and Amendment) Bill 2024 was passed unanimously by the West Bengal Assembly. The proposed legislation includes death penalty for the convicted perpetrator in instances when the assault kills or leaves the victim in a vegetative state, and death or life imprisonment without parole for other categories of rape convicts. It mandates that probes be completed within 21 days from the date of the FIR and trials within 30 days and that women officers lead these investigations. CM Mamata Banerjee has claimed that the Bill tries to “plug the loopholes that exist in the central legislation”. But it also throws open larger questions on accountability, and a political expediency that does not recognise or embrace the hard work of challenging patriarchy across social and political institutions.
While the involvement of female officers in the investigation and the emphasis on protecting the privacy and dignity of the survivor during the trial process are laudable, stricter laws have rarely made up for cultures of misogyny. Between 2018 and 2022, conviction rates for rape remained around 28 per cent, according to NCRB data. For most survivors, even getting to the trial means overcoming a system that is rarely sensitive or sympathetic. There are other institutional challenges to due process, including but not limited to investigative and judicial quality and capacity. Studies show that the death penalty offers little deterrence to heinous crimes. Following the 2012 Delhi gang rape, the Justice JS Verma-led Committee had suggested many changes, including the sensitisation of the police force, widening the ambit of what constitutes rape, and a reimagination of the idea of masculinity consolidated by families, societies and the state. It had argued that “it would be a regressive step to introduce death penalty for rape even where such punishment is restricted to the rarest of rare cases.”
Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, political parties across the spectrum had spoken of the centrality of “nari shakti” to their vision of India. Yet, there remains an inherent lack of understanding of what women want and need: Not political playbooks that counter outrage with populist solutions but safe spaces at home and outside; not whataboutery about issues of women’s safety but public infrastructures that do not invisibilise or hem them in; not a lack of accountability but equal opportunities. Stricter punishment and harder laws are quick-fix solutions. Peeling off layers of patriarchy in everyday governance is the much harder but far more crucial task.
