Is the cell phone a modern Indian girl’s best friend? A survival kit in a Hunger Game of lustful men? That is the question I has asked in response to the airline molestation video. And then, in ugly nauseous irony, I awoke to a rape video popping up on my Facebook feed. The cell phone had turned on the woman and joined the devil in a sickly dance of assault and ignominy.
Shame The Rapist was the aim of campaign on Facebook, initiated by activist Sunitha Krishnan. Two videos had been posted, with the victims blurred and the ‘rapists’ faces highlighted.
Well intentioned, but not much point, I thought cynically. The adjoining article said that these two videos had done the rounds on WhatsApp for the past 6 months already, without the blur and edit. SIX MONTHS!! Forget shamed, shouldn’t therapists have been arrested and charged already? Had the video not landed in the WhatsApp feed of a single socially conscious, sensitive, law abiding citizen? Had the rapists known that the video will proliferate social media, to be seen and shared as easy porn-on-the-phone? They had no fear of being identified or implicated, grinning into camera as they took turns to rape.
I decided against bringing up this rape video as a “news story” at the morning edit meeting in the newsroom. Sickened at the thought of what the rape victims must go through every time the videos play out, I felt it did not need another outing. No one was going to shame no rapist, if they hadn’t already. This would be no more than another candle flickering at a protest march. Let us shame them when we can name them.
And then the news flashed. Sunitha Krishnan’s car had been vandalised. Suddenly the story bled out of social media and splashed all over news television.
At the end of a day of talkathons, Nirbhaya references (fund and all) and outrage, some questions remain unanswered.
Who vandalised Sunitha’s car? For a change, this couldn’t be the rent-a-goon loony right or the moral police. They are busy with Valentine’s Day shaadi preps. Then who? WHO?
Who took the #shametherapist video off You Tube minutes after the car was vandalised? And why? Did we not want to shame them anymore?
And the question that I will not even dare ask -now that the circled close ups of the men have flashed all day on TV screens- will the rapists be caught?
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